Love Never Bothered Me Anyway
by Desert.Moon
Summary: "You've really become cold, Elsa." / "But I'm happy, Jack. Isn't that what you wanted for me?" True love thaws a frozen heart, but Jack Frost never wanted that. Now he's not sure true love will be enough - for this is not only eternal winter, but eternal night, with Elsa's bitterness driving her to take her rightful place as queen of the cold and dark... (JELSA JELSA EVERYWHERE)
1. This Vacant Night

A/N: Some of you are probably confused.

Many of you came to this profile for Naruto fanfiction, and stayed for Naruto fanfiction. Many of you witnessed my assertion that I would have to back out of fanfiction for a while to work on my personal writing. So what, you may be asking yourselves, am I doing back here, and not even with a Naruto fic?

Well, it's NaNoWriMo, and I thought, while I'm working on my own writing (which is going quite well, thanks—I've just sold a story!), I might as well use this month to spill out a story that's been bothering me for… months. Almost a year. And since I can't otherwise justify writing it, a month where you're required to write quickly and _NOT EDIT_ seemed perfect.

So, here it is: a super self-indulgent story about Jack Frost and Elsa and all these things that should or should not have been. Take it or leave it. And remember: This is NaNoWriMo, so no, you don't get to mock me for NaNoisms, typos, plot holes, or overall lack of editing. ;D See my profile to vote on how soon you see the next chapter!

Without further ado...

_**Love Never Bothered Me Anyway**_

_For Stacia. Obviously._

1 (This Vacant Night)

The North Pole glitters around them as it always has, as warm and comforting as the snow outside is not. Jack walks through it as if he's inured to its bright charm, staff casually over one shoulder, drawing shimmering spirals of frost on the toys with one bored finger as he passes them. Tiny glass windows in a towering confection of a dollhouse, too recently heated and shaped, crack at the sudden cold on their surface; a yeti howls in rage; Jack shrugs, and grins, and paints new fractal scintillas on the lens of a kaleidoscope. North doesn't seem to notice. He's talking, but Jack ceased listening several minutes ago.

North rounds on him, and Jack backpedals. North roars his name—"_JACK!"_—and Jack hollers back, laughing—"_SANTA—_ha ha, your face, sorry, but you should _see _your expression—"

North's look of surprise furrows and he folds his massive arms over his bulging stomach. Jack has always thought this makes North look even bigger than he already is—undoubtedly why he does it. Jack tilts his head back and looks unimpressed.

"I think you are not taking your job seriously," says North.

Jack rolls his eyes, leaning back against the air as if a wall of solid cold is holding him up. "Of _course_ I'm not taking my job seriously," he says. A glossy track blossoms out from the end of his staff; several elves go sliding away from their tasks as the floor beneath their feet turns to ice. "That's the whole point of _me_." The elves are now clambering over each other in an attempt to mob Jack as punishment for his offenses. None of them consider moving _off_ the ice trail, turning the revenge plot into a jingling, squabbling cross between a slip-and-slide and a dog pile. Jack's grin doesn't anticipate North's next words.

"I wanted to say this in place where only you hear me," North says, shaking his head, "but is only way to get your attention."

"What, what, I'm listening," Jack protests, predictably ignoring him in favor of tormenting the heap of elves further.

"We need to talk about Arendelle," says North.

Jack stops.

The whole room stops. Toy production crashes to a halt as every yeti turns its attention to Jack Frost and Santa Claus. They all know. Even the elves stop scrambling and jingling and tangling multicolored lights together.

Jack's smile is gone, melted away more quickly than spring ever comes in. He looks down, away. Something sullen settles into the shadows under his eyes. Something sad crouches behind them.

"I don't want to talk about Arendelle," he says.

North looks stern. Jack tries to remember the last time he saw North looking stereotypically jolly. It is a hopeless way of distracting himself. He flicks more ice at the elves; the slick path they're stuck on branches out, taking individual elves with it. They run in place, arms outstretched, with no traction on the perfectly smooth mirror beneath their striped socks. Jack cannot even smile.

He expects the last time North looked jolly was before Arendelle.

"Take your frosty keister out of here," says North, "and do job Man in Moon gave you."

"I'm a Guardian of _Childhood_," Jack protests, falling backwards through his invisible support before managing to catch himself and stand up straight. "And _Fun. _Not a Guardian of… Grown Up Queens Who Take Everything Too Seriously."

"Some children out there probably need Guardian under rule of Grown Up Queen." North towers like a glacier, his _NAUGHTY _tattoo glaring down at Jack, who refuses to back up. "Arendelle has children, and they are afraid."

As much as Jack doesn't want to admit it, North is probably right. While he always thought eternal winter sounded perfect, eternal night doesn't have quite so many opportunities for fun. It just leaves a lot of dark spaces under beds, a lot of deep shadows reaching out grasping, unavoidable hands.

And when eternal night is ruled by a snow queen with a bitter, broken heart, he supposes any child is lucky enough to get out alive.

"And Jack," calls North. Jack—one hand curled around his crooked staff so tightly that his knuckles are whiter than his hair; the other tucked into the pocket of his hoodie, where he pretends it is not clenched into a fist tight with emotion—Jack doesn't turn back. It doesn't stop North.

"Jack," says Santa Claus, who is supposed to be jolly and kind, "we all know is your fault."

Jack sweeps his staff in an arc along the ground, calling up a gust of wind that sends toys toppling and elves soaring and yetis howling and a white-haired spirit of winter flying out into the cold.

-o-

Arendelle is empty.

It feels that way, with the night closed in like the heavy lid of some giant box, some giant cage. Jack never minded nighttime; he loves watching the Sandman's fluid golden strands falling across the black sky like shimmering seafoam cresting dark waves. But Sandy's luminous dreams are conspicuously absent here—and worse, there are no stars, not even the background aurora of the moon. The sight of the moon has always been infuriating to him, painful, but he finds he misses it suddenly. He wishes he could shout up at the omniscient Man in the Moon, demand answers like he did every night for three hundred years, yelling himself hoarse to one more distant soul who never heard him.

It wasn't fun, but it was better than this.

Jack leaves no footprints in the snow, walking down empty streets, past shuttered houses. No need to ask what happened to everyone. They fled the winter and the empty sky, leaving the kingdom if they could—and if not, retreating into homes ill-suited to staving off the dark. Behind the slammed shutters, some homes have a limning glow of desperate fires; it's not a warm or welcoming sight, like blazing hearths on Christmas day, but instead gives the houses the eerie quality of burning down from the inside. Even Jack shivers a little, and he doesn't feel the cold. There's something more than ice and snow to this winter's night.

There's fear.

Jack could have flown straight to the castle, and he almost let himself. But if he's going to be a Guardian to something, he might as well see what he's protecting.

No—he just needs to see what he's done.

He shies away from the thought, from taking responsibility—even as North's final admonition rings again and again in his bones, _is your fault_, and he's right, everyone knows—and sweeps himself back into the air, spiraling over faintly- smoking chimneys and iced shingles. Even if there are no stars and no moon and not even the barest glimmer of light—of hope—there is still wind, and the wind carries him in a twisting rollercoaster gust toward… home.

The castle gates are still open. Jack wonders if they have ever closed since the moment the queen promised they never would again. Now, they stand wide, presuming to welcome in any townsfolk who prefer to seek shelter beneath the vaulted ceilings of the royal residence—so much harder to heat, with all that soaring space, and so much harder to fill, but so much easier to delude yourself into thinking that the power mortared into this building will protect you from the world outside. _The queen will protect us_.

Ah, but the queen has done this. That's what happened to everybody.

So Jack passes nobody as he skates through the courtyard and down the entrance hall. The citizens of Arendelle don't ever think _the princess will save us_; sweet and caring and fun-loving as Anna is, she can't compete with the howling gale- force strength of her sister out of control. Everyone loves Anna, and no one really trusts her.

The painstakingly-painted patterns on Anna's door are pitted and cracked, as if something sharp and angry scraped through them as it hurtled down the hallway. Jack raises his hand to knock, then hesitates, musters a grin. The room next door only has an empty doorway, splintery wood hanging from the frame; it's hard to tell if it's wanton destruction by the same force that clawed at Anna's door, or purposeful damage to claim firewood from any source possible. Either way, Jack creeps through it, pushing open the window and stepping out into vacant air. He drifts backward until he reclines against the wind, hands behind his head, staff beneath him, and floats away from the empty room, toward Anna's window. The end of his staff taps casually against the glass, creating intricate whorls of feathered ice that seeps into the room and writes itself across the walls.

Anna nearly knocks him out of the air when she throws the window open, shouting, "_Jack!"_ with a joy he doesn't deserve. Jack scrambles to avoid the swinging window-frame and lunges forward to perch on the sill. The smile that cracks the rime of frost on his pale face feels real this time. He almost can't believe how good it is to hear Anna's voice.

She seems to remember she's supposed to be angry with him and fixes a stern expression on her face. It reminds him of North, without any of the actually intimidating qualities. "Jackson Overland _Frost_," she says grumpily.

"Hey," he says, "not fair. I can't shout _your_ full name back at you."

"Sure you can." She steps to the side, letting him alight on the carpet and closing the window behind him. Despite the blazing fire, she is already shivering from those few moments letting in the cold.

"Not without sounding like a herald announcing you at a ball." He affects a snobbish, deep voice, lifting his nose into the air. "_Princess Anna of Arendelle! _It doesn't sound cranky at all."

She giggles, and he walks around the edges of the room, trailing fingers and frost along the wall. She's alone in here. "Where are the servants?" he asks. "You can't be the only one still in the castle."

"No, they're doing… servant-y things?" She returns to the fire, sitting so close to it that he's afraid it might catch her clothes aflame. "They made me stay here." She scoffs. "Like they can tell me what to do! I'm a princess!"

"But you're here," he points out.

"…I'm cold," she admits.

Jack nods, not looking at her. The servants might be out, collecting more firewood—though he expects the kingdom is running low by now—or preparing vast quantities of hot soup, but she still shouldn't be alone.

"Where's Kristoff?"

Anna drapes her arm across her forehead, swooning dramatically back onto her chaise-lounge. "We broke up," she announces mournfully, eyes closed in an expression of utmost tragedy.

"Again?" says Jack.

"It'll be over soon," says Anna, without opening her eyes. "We just needed time. You know. To see other people."

Jack's eyes flicker around the empty room, amused. "And are you?"

She opens her eyes and sits up. "Am I what?"

"Seeing other people?"

"Oh. I'm. Uh. Seeing you. Right now. There you are. I'm seeing you, with my eyes."

Jack laughs, leaning against the wall beside the hearth. He doesn't like how cold he's getting, not when it shouldn't be affecting him at all, but he doesn't stand close enough to the fire to make it obvious that he's trying to garner some of its warmth for himself. No need to let Anna know that even a spirit of winter can't take this hiemal night. "Sorry, Anna. I'm—"

"I know, I know." She sighs loudly. "Taken."

He freezes, for a moment, startled, his smile turning brittle. He recovers quickly, flipping himself away from the wall, upwards, and turning several airborne loop-the-loops. "Not _taken_," he assures her, although she does not look assured. "Footloose and fancy- free." He lands on the chaise next to her, ruffling her hair with a toss of icy wind that makes her shiver. "Anyway, you need to stop learning how relationships work from romance novels."

Anna throws herself backwards again, arms spread, gazing tragically at the ceiling. "When you're shut up in a palace for _years_ with _no one_ to talk to, there isn't anyone else to learn it _from_, Jack." She exhales with an excess of exasperated melodrama. "And besides, it's not like _Elsa_ knows anything about romance—"

This time even Anna notices the way his smile fades, the way the air between them grows sharp and hard, like a fortress of icicles and memory. The silence is agonizing, and when the window crashes back open in a lament of frost and storm- wind, Jack doesn't know if he did it or if it was the howl of the encroaching night.

"Jack," says Anna, suddenly on the verge of tears, her teeth chattering—Jack wishes hugging her would do anything, would tell her how their friendship means almost as much to him as her sister's, would make her even an iota warmer than she is now; but without a human body with hot, pulsing blood instead of frost, only the eldest daughter of Arendelle ever felt his hugs as comfort. "Jack, you have to do something."

He settles into a seat on the chaise, his back to Anna, wrists draped over his knees, staff rolling into the crook where his shoulder met his neck. Frost fills in the dimpled fabric of the chaise-lounge, the nooks in the carpet where his feet touch. He watches it, trying to remember when it was fun, when he delighted in the making of it. Only minutes ago, he sent it racing across Anna's room with a satisfied pleasure, creating each tooth and branch of ice to be unique. Now it's just a haphazard reminder of all the things he can't hide.

"That's why I'm here," he says, and the wind keens through the castle in hyperborean response.


	2. Other Places, Other Times

A/N: Just wanted to note that while I mostly use the_ Rise of the Guardians _movie lore, I occasionally drag in _Guardians of Childhood _book lore for backstory; I've only read the first one and some Wikipedia pages, so my knowledge is not complete—which probably means I run the risk of offending everyone who hasn't read the books and is consequently confused by my vague references AND everyone who has read all the books and is consequently upset by my incomplete/incorrect references, but whatever, I'm authoress here, I can do what I want. ;D

2 (Other Places, Other Times)

Jack wonders if he should regret being sent to Arendelle the first time.

It isn't as if he had much of a choice, of course. It wasn't all that different from this time: North leading him through the sparkling layers of the North Pole, talking while Jack didn't listen. Jack would forever be endlessly fascinated by the bastion of warmth and light and color in the midst of the stark white world. His inherent need to have _fun _is always so easily distracted when he's summoned to the North Pole; he just wants to dash off, cavort through the hot cocoa fumes and elf-strung lights, leap from railing to railing, running his hands across the shining towers of chrome and paint and plastic and magic. Santa Claus might specialize in Wonder, but he sure understood _Fun_ nearly as well as Jack himself.

Sometimes Jack hates that he is so immersed in winter itself; he doesn't belong to this world of sugared cookies, roaring fires, model trains, rocking horses, dress-up dolls. North belongs to winter, but he lives amidst heat and light and joy; Jack has to bring joy to a hopeless landscape of biting snow.

He supposes it has to do with where they came from: he, from a desolate underwater grave, iced-over and frozen in not-quite-death; North, from a glistening life of adventure and infinite treasure. He's always wondered if he could go back, bring light to the dim fire-lit cottages of the colonial era, would it help? If they'd had light-up robots and flashing jewelry, would his eternal life have been bright?

Jack doesn't think so—and he doesn't really want that. He appreciates the simplicity of three hundred years ago more than he admits when creating intricate frost patterns and elaborate plans for mischief. But the purity of unbroken snow—that's easy. That's rarer now than it used to be, with civilization so expanded and tramping through the virgin spaces. If he went back, he wouldn't disturb that peace.

But sometimes he is so very bitter with the frigid darkness of his death, the eternal winter of his spirt.

It's why he spent so long trying to break into North's headquarters before he became a Guardian, and why he still never pays attention when he's invited in. It wasn't any different the day North sent him to Arendelle, either—strolling along in North's wake, staff across his shoulders like a yoke, glacier-blue eyes on everything but the jolly old man in front of him. That time they at least made it back to North's office, closing the two of them off from everything but a handful of confused elves and the wafting scents of fruitcake and scorched chestnuts.

"I have mission for you," North announced, sweeping a map open on his desk. It wrinkled and dipped across the cluttered surface, making mountains and valleys where there were none. "I am little jealous, has been many years since I have explored such new places. I have been everywhere now, I think." He pointed enthusiastically at a place on the map, amidst thick black lines of hatching to mark deep forests and mountain ranges.

"Arendelle!" North boomed, looking up to make sure Jack was as excited as he was. He found Jack prodding at a remote control Pegasus halfway across the room, his staff leaning against . "_Jack_."

"Sorry, sorry," Jack said, sounding nothing of the sort, sauntering back towards the desk, the map, and the irritated Guardian. "What've you got today, Santa?"

"_Arendelle_," North said insistently, finger bouncing up and down on the map. "Is in Norway. Needs Guardian. You will be perfect."

"What? No!" He gestured energetically, punctuating his refusal with splayed fingers and tense elbows. "My friends are _here_." He waved a hand, indicating not just the North Pole—the yeti probably didn't consider him a _friend_, particularly, considering how much trouble he caused them—but the general state of places he frequented. "Look, Jamie's in _America_. And—"

"Sandman goes all places. Arendelle's children dream also." North gave Jack a look like he wasn't buying any of the younger spirit's excuses. "At Christmas, _I_ go to Arendelle."

"Okay, yeah," said Jack, crossing his arms, "but—who made you the boss of me anyway? You don't run the Guardians, the Man in the Moon does."

"Is mission from Man in Moon," North asserted immediately.

"You just made that up!" Jack threw his hands in the air. "I can go wherever I want. Children need fun other places than Air-and-dale."

"Arendelle," North corrected. "Is just a town. You could go to others. Oslo is nice."

Jack ignored him. "Children in _America _still need to have fun," he said pointedly.

"Yes, but you said it exactly," said North, brandishing the map. It flapped around, sending several delicate-looking tools crashing off the desk. "_Other places!_ Jamie is good friend, true, but he is not_ only_ friend." He rolled up the map. "Pennsylvania has had awful lot of snow days this year."

"So?"

"Is _September_."

Jack pivoted, pacing back across the room to retrieve his staff. Little patches of frost blossomed in his wake. "Jamie was the first person to see me," he muttered.

"I know this."

"Do you?" Jack flipped himself onto the worktable, knocking the Pegasus onto its side, where it began flapping uncontrollably. "_Three hundred years_, Santa, can you even comprehend that? Being invisible for _three hundred years_? I had no one to talk to except all you stuffy holiday royalty, and let me tell you, Cupid is _not_ great conversation after a while." He flicked the Pegasus, freezing its joints solid to stop the flapping. "No one would _listen_ to me." Jack finally looked back at North, resentment darkening his expression. "Even you guys didn't really believe in me."

North was quiet for many moments. "This may be true," he admitted at last, settling heavily into the chair behind his desk. "But all is different now, Jack. You are Guardian. Many children believe. Many more still can!" He jabbed the map in Jack's direction. "And Pennsylvania children need to go to school some days this year."

"Says who," said Jack under his breath, but he twirled his staff up to rest it on his shoulder and met North's bright blue eyes. Well. If North could see the wonder in this, perhaps Jack could find some fun, too. "Fine. But I get to blame you when I tell Jamie he has to go back to school."

"Yes, yes." North flapped one enormous hand in Jack's direction. "You tell him it is Santa's fault he must go to school in September, and also it is Santa's fault he does not have to go to school in December."

"No, that's snow day season, which is _my_ territory—"

"Aha! But it is _Christmas_ Break." North unrolled the map again with such furor that he nearly ripped it. "Now. Arendelle. Is very snowy, you will like. Perhaps you can make headquarters there."

-o-

A panicked yeti burst through the door while North was in full swing about travel plans—as if Jack couldn't just fly anywhere he needed to go. He didn't need _help _getting to Norway. Apparently under the impression he would sit quietly and wait, or else take himself straight to Arendelle, North left Jack with a plate of cookies shaped like snowflakes and shepherd's crooks. Jack amused himself for a few minutes sweeping the crooked-staff cookies around in front of him, making them shoot ice like his regular staff. He busted several levitating rockets and a stuffed cat before he was bored enough to eat the cookie and go rifling through the things in North's desk. In retrospect, he really didn't know why North thought it was safe to leave him alone in here; this was the first time, the _very first time_ he had ever been free in the North Pole; he would be able to go _anywhere_, see anything, pilfer any toy he wanted. Whatever that yeti had been garbling about, it must have been important.

Little frosty fingerprints sparkled on the drawers Jack explored, his insolent signature on everything he touched. North would know, anyway, so he might as well rub it in. He picked through numerous spindly tools in gold and crystal, some so delicate they might have been made of ice—they weren't; Jack checked—some with branching protrusions that he couldn't possibly comprehend as being useful.

North hadn't returned; Jack started to feel mischief burgeoning with himself; the _whole of the North Pole! _Why was he still in this office? He dropped something that looked like a screwdriver crossed with a candy-cane; it rolled back into the drawer as Jack turned away, gathering up his staff, feeling the grin unfurling across his face while the craftiest crannies in his trouble-making brain got to work. Sure, he would go to Arendelle, but he didn't have to go _now_—

When the tool clattered back into place, Jack was already halfway to the door. But the sound it made on falling clanged like a grandfather clock, the deep thunder of three hundred years chiming midnight. Jack paused, turned back, yanked the drawer the rest of the way open.

What he found resembled one of North's snow-globes—the ones that carried him across continents in seconds and always took him back home again—but it was different. Cascades of Lilliputian clockwork crawled up the inside surfaces of the glass and spilled back down again, tiny gears turning in stuttering patterns. They're almost like tiny frost flowers made of metal in their feathery intricacy; Jack watches them with undisguised delight, peering closer and closer. Infinitesimal writing in incomprehensible languages cavorts across gold and brass; the snow-globe itself rested on a base of bulky black Roman numerals against round white backgrounds, each circle cradled by ornate gold curlicues. It was a work of art.

Jack intended to have some serious fun with it.

He laughed, shaking it, as he hopped up onto the desk, little fireworks of ice popping around him. He knew that North had been trained by a sorcerer—Father Time. Clearly North was delving deeper into his tutor's work, tinkering with new levels of travel that Jack couldn't reach simply through his rapport with the wind. And why should Santa Claus get to have all the fun?

The clockwork inside the globe creaked and groaned, and an image built itself up from the floor of the glass-and-chrome sphere—a castle, and simple homes rising out of the banks of summer-bright water, and snow-capped mountains towering over it all. Something inside of Jack hardened and cracked, and for a minute, he missed growing up three hundred years ago more than anything, missed causing trouble in a time when children weren't more easily amused by video games and cartoons, things he couldn't touch. He tossed the snow-globe onto the ground, letting it roll off his fingers and bounce and spiral colored light into the air.

Just for a moment, he hesitated. He didn't consider how he would get back; he didn't worry about how he was dressed, or who would be able to see him. The only thing he thought was that, if he went through that portal, he wouldn't be able to say goodbye to Jamie and his cabal, or apologize for the sudden cease of snow days. He didn't want them to think he'd abandoned them.

But it was time travel—maybe he'd be able to come back to right when he left. And anyway, if he didn't go now, he almost definitely wouldn't have a second chance at it.

So he'd go to Arendelle, like North wanted. He'd just do it his own way.

Jack Frost spun his staff up to his shoulder and sauntered through the light.


	3. Destroy Me

A/N: I forgot to do that ever-so-important disclaimer thing, which is that I do not own any character portrayed here, nor do I claim to be particularly good at characterizing them. The plot's all me though, for better or for worse. P:

P.S. If nobody stops me, I'm just going to keep posting these chapters immediately upon finishing them, day after day, NaNo-rush and all. Didn't even check this one for typos or incorrect tense changes, go me.

3 (Destroy Me)

When Jack Frost lives, Arendelle has been dark for almost two hundred years.

He never dared go see it, not after he fled the past—telling himself he wasn't running away, not exactly—never dared fly over the blackout zone of Norway that even the grown-ups started to see after a while. Pitch loved that, Jack knew. When a vast swath of a country—a whole kingdom—descends into cold shadow for three centuries, people really start to believe in the Bogeyman again. There isn't anything else that can explain it, is there?

They're only half right. The Bogeyman, yes—and the Snow Queen.

No one had known it was Jack's fault, not for a long time, and no one had been able to do anything about it. Beneath a black shroud, Arendelle stagnated, withered—perhaps died. Jack always wondered if he would be able to get in to see, where no one else could, but he had never tried.

When he'd first run from Arendelle, finally shaking the clockwork snow-globe back to function and tumbling back into the time period he'd come from, the Guardians almost managed to take him there. Jack was disoriented, staggering into North's office to find the North Pole in a maelstrom of chaos, of preparations for war.

"Jack!" Toothiana yelped as she zoomed past him amidst a tornado of tiny emerald fairies. "Where've you been?" She zipped back and came to a vibrating halt in front of him. "Waitaminute, how did you get in there?"

"I—uh—what?"

"Everyone! Hey, everyone, I found Jack!"

The rest of the Guardians gathered quickly while Jack frantically sought for some explanation—had he come back at the wrong point? He'd been concentrating on the minutes after North left on the heels of the panicked yeti, but so much time had passed in Arendelle that he'd found it difficult to recollect those exact moments—he wasn't even quite sure what he'd been doing before he found the snow-globe. Maybe he'd missed it, but that left him completely in the dark as to _when_ he was, and no way to find out without alerting the Guardians as to where he'd been.

"Where've y'been, mate?" Bunny echoed Tooth's question, joining her in a sharp stop. "We nearly sailed for Arendelle without ya."

"Arendelle?" Jack repeated, leaning forward onto his staff. "I mean, America, I was in America, what's—?"

"Pay attention, Jack," North boomed, stomping past without stopping. His appearance gave Jack an excuse to look away from Bunny, whose expression was the only one who didn't quite believe him. They were friends by now, but Bunny didn't entirely trust him, Bunny had a long memory and held grudges forever and would never completely forget the Easter ruined by Jack's absence….

"Is time for new assault on Arendelle," explained North unhelpfully before disappearing into ranks of yetis.

"Now that you're a Guardian, it's time for you to come with us!" Tooth contributed enthusiastically, feathers flaring. Her face fell a little. "Maybe you'll be able to help us against Pitch again…"

Those words froze Jack where he stood. When he'd left here, Pitch had been ragged memories in the breeze, remnants of shadow dragged beneath the ground.

But when he'd left Arendelle, Pitch had been in control.

Slowly, he turned his head to Sandy, who had rapid gold clouds over his spiky hair. When he saw that Jack was finally looking at him, the images slowed: the silhouette of Norway, a castle shrouded in a shimmering haze that Jack knew represented shadow, an ominous mist spreading outward, snowflakes, nightmares, the blank unreasoning terror of an empty sky, question marks question marks question marks—

What he'd fled in the past was still happening here, two hundred years later, but the Guardians didn't know why. Except for Jack.

He didn't volunteer the information, wobbly with shock and loss and an icy disconnect between the world he'd departed and the world he'd returned to. They exeunted the North Pole carried along by unparalleled pandemonium, North's sleigh packed with yetis—others riding the reindeer—and Bunny, the others flying behind.

Jack let himself get quietly lost in the winds over Europe. That was probably when the Guardians started to figure out he had something to do with it. Well—he thought the Sandman figured it out earlier, but Sandy had always liked him. Sandy trusted him to realize what the right thing to do was.

The trouble was, Jack knew what he should do. He just couldn't bring himself to see that ever-expanding blackness, not up close, not even from a distance, not even when he'd finally, _finally_ been convinced to go back. He'd just gone straight to the clockwork snow-globe and the past, which was at once so much easier and so much harder all at once.

Now he paces the tattered halls of old Arendelle, past Arendelle, and continues to wonder if he'd be able to pass through that cold night in the future. He wonders what he would find. Is Anna long dead, is she moldering dust in a dark grave, died of cold in front of her hearth while she tried to rule a kingdom that wasn't really hers? Or is she lost somewhere in the snow, her body preserved on some mountainside, having tried one last time to go after her sister?

Jack was there the first time she tried go after her sister. Jack was there every time she tried to go after her sister.

And what about the queen, three centuries from now? Is she the same, frozen in a perfect image of who she is today? Or is she dead, too, and Pitch left to rule their dark kingdom with the power she left behind?

Unconsciously, he clutches one hand to his head at the thought of her dead. The agony of it bursts like fire beneath his sternum, but now he can't rid himself of it. What if it's the only way to stop her?

His fist slams into a wall, cracking it like it's thin ice. Silvery plumes emerge from the edges of the fissures. Jack lets his hand slide down the broken surface and tries to remember when he grew to be so angry. He had three centuries to cultivate his control; he never used to make frost when he was angry. He probably picked it up from her.

-o-

The corridors are empty, the servants undoubtedly avoiding him. Jack claims he's still here because he's working on a plan, building up some strategy before he goes to face his crimes—her crimes—the crimes she committed, he caused. The truth is, Jack has never been very good at planning; Jack dives straight in, doesn't measure how deep the water is, how thick the ice is, how many things could possibly go wrong or how he'll fix them if they do. It's not as much fun to think ahead, to talk yourself out of it because it might not go perfectly. If the ice cracks, he'll play a game. If the truck comes barreling down the road, he'll build a ramp.

That's how he intends to go after her, too; all he's doing here is stalling.

A servant hurries past him, burdened down with a tower of threadbare blankets that had almost certainly been bound for the rag bin before every scrap of fabric in the kingdom was needed. She determinedly ignores him, striding down the desolate hall, but a question, such an _important_ question bursts on Jack in a moment and he leaps after her, calling out. She doesn't turn; Jack grabs her shoulder and misses, his fingers sliding right through her.

He staggers backward, slamming into the wall, letting his staff clatter to the ground. He shouldn't be surprised, but he is. It crashes over him like an avalanche, the notion that all the servants—the whole _kingdom_—might have stopped believing in him by now. It isn't that they've forgotten his existence—no, he's sure they remember him, this distant hazy figure that _caused_ _this_—it's just that he caused this, and then _left them_, and didn't come back, and now they don't believe he ever will.

Jack runs back to Anna's room. When he bursts in, heedless of the door slamming against the wall, all he wants to do is ask her if she knew the servants stopped believing in him, to demand if he is invisible to all of them except for her.

But he doesn't. Instead, over her protests of "Jack, what if I'd been _undressed_—" he asks, "Anna, where's Olaf?"

She stops mid-sentence and he is startled to see tears welling up in her eyes. Immediately, he wants to take it back; the words are halfway out of his mouth—_No, no, I'm sorry, let's have some fun instead, we're friends aren't we? _But friends don't make friends cry, friends don't leave friends stranded amidst an immortal winter's night, so he stands helpless and quiet, not even able to hug her for fear of the chill it will impart on her, not even able to think of a single joke to bring the smile back. If the mention of Olaf, who didn't have a sad bone in his body—literally—drives Anna to tears, Jack can't imagine anything he can say to make her laugh.

"It was—Elsa—Pitch—" Anna hiccups slightly, and Jack takes a hesitant step closer. She scrubs away the tears and fixes a look of furious determination on her face.

"Whoops, got a little melodramatic there," she says with indomitable cheer. "Sorry. Olaf though. Elsa took him apart."

"He's dead?"

"Well, reduced to his component snowflakes anyway. I don't know, can snowmen die?" She frowns a little. "I think Pitch made her do it."

"Not surprised." Jack sighs and flips his staff across his shoulders. "Sounds like Pitch." He wanders toward the window, leaving a weaving trail of icicles in his wake. He really has to get those under control. He hasn't slipped like this since his first century of capering across the world, watching his powers flare out of him in gusts and whorls. Back when the loneliness hadn't crossed over into something resembling madness just yet; back when talking to the holiday spirits hadn't lost its novelty, so he didn't have to talk to himself or the uncaring moon.

The second century got pretty bad, but the third—by the time the Man in the Moon chose him to be a Guardian without even asking him, without even delivering the message himself—Jack had almost stopped caring. He locked up the part of him that went wild with desperation and let his mischief run rampant instead, a freedom of blizzards and snow days and gale-driven rollercoasters for the children who couldn't see him.

Shut down one part of yourself, and another has to take its place. Usually something darker. Something bitter. That's what happened to her.

Jack runs a hand through his silver hair, leaning his forehead against the chilled window glass. What he wouldn't give to be wheeling free like that now. What he wouldn't give to be able to shout at the moon again.

Suddenly, Anna makes a sound of incoherent disgust and throws a pillow from her chaise-lounge at him. He ducks, and a tiny gust of icy wind sends it spiraling off-course. "Hey!"

"Ugh! Jack! If you had just—"

"I know, I know!" he yells, letting his staff fall, throwing his hands into the air. Anna can't seem to think of anything else to throw at him—objects or accusations—she just looks a little wild, upset, and Jack breathes rapidly, every inhalation an effort. He feels weak, tired. The servants don't believe in him. The kingdom doesn't believe in him.

"She wouldn't be this strong if I had," he says into the fragile silence between them, pleading almost.

"She wouldn't be this _evil_, either," says Anna. Jack looks away and he thinks again of her dead in the snow. Of Elsa dead in the snow.

It's the first time he's even let himself think her name since he left here, and maybe that's how he knows it's time to go.

"She's on the North Mountain, isn't she?" Jack asks. He doesn't really need to; there isn't any other place she would be. They talked about it, once, when she first showed him through the branching fractal halls of her ice palace, the day they met. "This is _amazing_," he told her, leaping to the banister of the grand staircase, launching himself towards a crystalline pillar, looping his arm around it and balancing on its vertical surface. She smiled quietly—he would have to work on that—and he slid down the pillar, jumping the last few feet to land in a bow in front of her, arms outstretched.

"You know, this would make a pretty great headquarters," he said, straightening up and strolling across the glossy floor, occasionally pretending to slip spectacularly and glancing back to see if she would laugh. She didn't; she just followed him with her wide blue eyes, resisting the smile he could detect at the corners of her lips, like she couldn't risk the emotion.

"Headquarters?" she repeated.

"Yeah!" His excitement uncontainable on the ground, he jumped onto the banister again, walking up it like a mountainous balance beam, arms flung wide, staff in one pale hand. "North mentioned it—I think he was joking actually—but he has the North Pole you know, and Tooth has the Tooth Palace, and there's Sandy's Sandship—original, I know—" He sat cross-legged at the top of the banister, grinning down at her. "Mine could be here."

She paused, and her lips twitched. "Did you just invite yourself to live in my palace?"

He rested his elbow on his knee, his chin on his fist, and smirked. "Yeah, I guess I did."

-o-

"Yep," says Anna, and Jack nearly smacks his head on the glass, forgetting he asked her a question at all. Anna makes a face at him as he turns around, her arms folded sternly, like she's resisting throwing the rest of her pillows, or maybe a whole blanket next.

"She's waiting for you, Jack."

"I know." Slowly, he picks up his staff; colorless rime creeps across the grooves and ridges in the bark. "She thinks she can destroy me."

"Well, she probably can."

This might be the first time Jack wishes Anna had filters, some concept of what she can or cannot say. When no one's listening, you can say whatever you want, and for her, no one was ever listening—not her dead parents, her sequestered sister, the nursemaid who always treated her like a child even as she grew up alone, the servants who only treated her like royalty to be indulged but not engaged. Jack always felt for her, loved that she had the same habit of shouting at empty rooms, vacant nights, that he did; they both were raised by silence they felt the need to fill themselves. But just this once, he wishes she wouldn't say things like that, not in these moments where his resolve is so tenuous, as likely to break as the ice beneath his sister's feet. He's running out of time to leave before he changes his mind.

"Anna—" He steps closer to her, puts one hand on her shoulder. It sinks, slowly, like through molasses in winter. She watches it in horror so at least, he tells himself around the block of ice in his stomach, she can still see him.

Jack yanks his hand back and clenches it into a fist. "Don't say that," he says to her. "C'mon, Anna, we're friends, aren't we?" She nods energetically, like she can make up for his fading existence by acknowledging their friendship with enough force. "Then believe in me. Now more than _ever_, I need you to believe in me." She opens her mouth, to agree or protest, he doesn't know—he cuts her off.

"I came back, didn't I?"

"Took you long enough," she grumbles.

"Better late than never, right?" He shoulders his staff again. "I'm here. I'm not too late, am I?" He smiles weakly at this, mostly because he was two hundred years too late and had to come back again.

"Besides," he says, opening the window and climbing back onto the sill, "she can't do it. She can't destroy me."

"H-how can you p-_possibly_ know that?" Anna demands, making a valiant effort to stop her teeth from chattering and failing miserably.

"Because I love her," he says, and unfurls his sharpest grin, and throws himself back to the wind.

"And he says _I'm _dramatic," Anna mutters, tottering over to slam the window shut behind him.


	4. Borrowed Time

A/N: I just want to take a moment to thank my few but wonderful reviewers; really, you guys are what keep me coming back to fanfiction every time, so I appreciate every comment, no matter how small. c:

Also, this chapter is dedicated to Claam (my story knights you _Sir Claam of Chowder-land_) who has saved this story at many crazy turns so far. If you guys usually follow me for my Naruto fanfiction, you should definitely check out **Claamchowder**, for she has many magnificent ideas. :D

4 (Borrowed Time)

Jack knew he was running on borrowed time—literally—when he landed in Arendelle the first time, he just didn't expect it to matter. Why would he need to stay? This wasn't his era anymore; he could flit through the summer sun, delighting a few children with sparkling snowflakes in the oppressive heat, and soar back to the right time before North even noticed he had stolen some experimental magic and then disappeared.

But when he alit on the streets of Arendelle, he was knee-deep in snow.

The snow-globe hadn't sent him astray; he could feel summer hanging in the air beneath the crisp sting of the first snow. The dregs of determined sunlight drifted through the glimmer of sleet, but nothing seemed in the remotest danger of melting beneath its glare.

"Great," Jack commented to the biting air while he picked up the snow-globe and fidgeted with it, until he discovered a rotating clockwork mechanism that rendered it small enough to fit in his hoodie pocket. "This kingdom's already got it down! They hardly even need me."

Except the sky was far too quiet. Where were the shrieking cries of childhood's glorious laughter? Where was the crunch of small feet in huge boots in iridescent untouched ivory? _That's _what they needed him for.

Jack bent his knees and launched himself toward the nearest window, crowing to a sky muffled with silver the joy that surged within him in the rush of cold air and unseasonable weather. He landed against the wall, scrutinizing the interior for signs of children; finding none, he leapt and pivoted to the next, and the next, until he spotted two little girls playing on the floor beside a fire. Blankets lay strewn about them, as if their mother had swaddled the girls in fabric to keep them warm, and they had in turn discarded them for a more interesting method of keeping warm: wrestling each other on the floor, so close to the flames Jack thought they were likely to roll into them. Grinning, he hopped back off the windowsill and gathered up two handfuls of pure-white powder that solidified in his grasp.

It ruptured against the girls' window moments later, a spray of silver and the hint of his shimmering magic. The girls shrieked and broke apart, the younger of the two nearly singeing her coarse black hair in the fire as she scrambled to her feet.

"Mama, we wanna go outside!" shouted the older, who had wide-set green eyes and a limp.

A fragile-looking woman with an arrogant expression swept into the room, wearing a waist-hugging yellow dress Jack thought she must be freezing in. The hem was embroidered with purple and green flowers—he only noticed because he had seen the same symbol hanging on the castle walls. "No, no, it's freezing outside," he heard the woman say, as though her children would not have noticed this fact. "And _dark_." The second snowball whiffed against the glass and the two girls mobbed their mother, whose arrogant expression looked slightly less stony.

"But there's _snow_, Mama—"

"There's _never_ snow in summer—"

"Yes, that is generally the problem today—"

"_Mama_—"

A third snowball, and the woman's expression softened to match the powdery snow outside, and the girls were his.

Jack skipped backwards, laughing, while their mother bundled them up—picking a blanket off the floor to wear as a cape in the meantime—and whirled about, lobbing snowballs at windows up and down the street. The children came flooding out, their winter clothing unearthed from beneath their meager summer-wear, all shouting. And Jack joined in, not knowing that he should be hurrying, not wasting the time before it all went black. They didn't know his name yet, but a few more snowballs, a few more frosted slides and snow-puppies dashing through the whitened streets, and he would be visible again.

-o-

All the children went home to their beds at last, except for the two girls he had first lured out, who were helping him build a snowman of towering proportions. They kept adding on surplus limbs of the most bizarre constructions, and since they couldn't reach higher than the snowman's dubiously-labeled 'waist', all these extraneous appendages appeared to be legs of some sort or the other. Jack balanced on the snowman's head like a giant winter bird, grinning down at his new friends. The younger girl, Embla, was trying to climb onto her sister Alva's wobbly shoulders while carrying what was most likely intended to be an arm. Embla's brow was furrowed in intense concentration, her tongue peeking out of her lips, but Alva was chatting on about their mother, who lived in the castle.

"Mama's lady-waiting to the _queen_," she announced proudly, while Jack made it snow over the two girls. The flakes fluttered into their air like tiny baby birds drifting from their giant silver-haired winter-spirit father. Friendly flickering glows from the houses around them glinted off the pale stars in hair and sky. Jack was hardly listening to the girl; he was enjoying this temporary quiet, this stillness, for once not flitting from place to place but sitting steadily atop the snowman, snow in his palms and the Sandman's gold-dust trickling across the heavens. Jack could leave everything he knew, but there still had to be good dreams.

"But she always says she never even _seen _the queen," Alva added. Embla giggled, presumably at the unintentional rhyme, and toppled out of her sister's grip. Alva landed on top of her, both cradled by snowy touchdowns, and the two dissolved into another wrestling match, howling with laughter. Jack grinned, heart bursting just to watch it. He had brought this about. _His_ powers. Sometimes he had to stop and wonder at it still: He was a Guardian. He'd never wanted it, he'd refused it, he'd disdained it, flung it back in the face of the Man in the Moon. But he'd taken it, fanfare and all, and the giggles echoing against the cold winter's night made it absolutely worth everything.

Especially when their mother's sharp voice called down the street with the air of someone who had being doing so for many hours now, "Alva! EMBLA! It is _long past_ young ladies' bedtime!" and they scurried to their feet, down toward their house—and both looked back, pausing in unison to call, "Bye, Jack!" at the once-invisible boy crowning their strange slushy creation.

Jack hopped down, landed lightly on a crust of unbroken snow, straightened up to his full height. He followed the girls home, just to make sure they made it safely through the dark; hovering by the window, he watched them Alva throw herself at their mother and Embla at their stout father, both pattering on about the friend they made who could make the snow fall. Jack smiled as the girls were bundled off to bed, turning away to face the night, but the muffled end of a conversation pulled him back.

Their voices were quiet, so as not to disturb their children; Jack could barely hear them through the glass. "—queen did this?" said the father, his face shadowed with confusion in the flickering firelight.

"Queen for—hours, and already—"

"—north mountain—"

And then Jack felt it, the whole of wintertide trying to wrest itself from his grasp, like all the missing heat of summer had been converted into the energy needed for this moment. He doubled over, frost blasting out of him in erratic withered stars, splashing themselves across the sides of the nearest houses, the surface of the snow. His staff fell from nerveless fingers, white from crook to base. Winter refused to obey him; for a moment, even Jack Frost was cold.

The shivers passed, and Jack staggered upright again, snatching his staff back up. He almost couldn't convince the wind to take him, but he wheedled and smiled and soon wheeled northward among the drifting strands of the Sandman's dreams.

-o-

It wasn't difficult to find the source of the stranglehold on winter—and, he expected, the source of the winter itself. The sight of it struck him like a physical blow: a perfect castle made of ice, so brilliant it might have been crafted of colored light instead. Shafts of lucent glass rose from snow lit by an aqua glow like shallow seawater; dawn cresting the mountain reflected off the radiant spires, suffusing into fractals and fractures, tiny flaws deep within the auroral architecture. Jack hovered for a moment, awe striking him motionless, before he took off again, looping the towers and buttresses and burnished-glass walls. The castle was ice and cold, right down to its heart; he alighted on the fluted battlement of one spear-like minaret and pressed his palm to the wall; labyrinthine eddies of frost raced out across the surface, replicating and surging far beyond his command, like pale whirlpools of oil corkscrewing across vivid water.

Jack sat back on his haunches, staff in the crook of his elbow, tucking his hands into the pocket of his hoodie. He had never seen something so beautiful in his life. He wished he could see it being made, watch its forging from the refulgent heart of winter, beg its creator to teach him such command of the ice, which went far beyond his own.

His cold fingers found the snow-globe in his pocket, and he paused. Messing with time too extensively was a dumb idea—he'd have to be careful not to let himself see—but then again, why should he? He glanced around, a grin starting to unfurl across his face. He had already traveled through time; if he saw his past or future self, would it really be that strange?

Jack yanked the snow-globe out of his pocket, tossing it once in the air and catching it deftly before twisting it back to full-size. Piece by piece, an image of the mountain, untouched, put itself together within the transparent sphere. Jack shook the globe; it sputtered, clunked—the reflection within it wavered, losing a few fragments before it steadied—Jack made a face at it and gently tossed it onto the parapet.

The journey was shakier than he remembered the first one being, and he tumbled free into darkness without dawn, onto an uncorrupted expanse of alabaster lit only by the stars and that ever-watchful moon. Scrambling to his feet, he moved away from the area where the foundations of the crystalline castle would be laid, and threw himself to hang cross-legged in the air to wait.

For several tense minutes, while he impatiently changed positions over and over, he thought maybe the snow-globe had overshot; that its shaky voyage had been indication of failure in the mechanism—which had undoubtedly been experimental; that he would have to wait days for the castle to come, or else jump forward again and risk filling the air with multiple incarnations of Jack Frost, creating his own traffic jam in time. He reflected for one brief moment that this would make for perhaps the most epic snowball fight in all of history. Anxious boredom stretched out, and he considered giving it a go just to alleviate the tedium.

The girl came over the hill singing, and he did not expect that.


	5. First Dance

A/N: Some of my descriptions in this chapter got a little out of hand, but I was behind on my word count. :p

5 (First Dance)

Jack doesn't hurry. He floats, he drifts, on his back, legs stretched out, hands behind his head, staring straight up at the shrouded sky as he passes through it. When the blackness first crept into Arendelle and blocked out the true night, he thought that it not only hid the moon, but destroyed it—and something inside him had cracked, a strange sense of emptiness brought about by the presumed loss of his tri-centurial silent antagonist. Wracked by a panic in his veins, he found himself unable move; Jack was always moving, always goaded by the restlessness of centuries, but fear and shock and awe brought him to a stop. He might have crumpled beneath the void.

And then he fled to the future again and found the world as it should be, but for the blackout in Norway, and knew the Man in the Moon still reigned supreme in the heavens, as distant as ever, and it only made Jack mad.

Sometimes, he wishes he could hate the moon, his reticent creator who told him his name and nothing else—who watched Jack plead to that bright impassive face for three hundred years and never once said a word. If he had just said _something_, they would've been alright, Jack could have forgiven him—but he never did learn what he was doing wrong.

Maybe the Man in the Moon never spoke to him because he felt guilty for watching Jack die, for doing nothing, for resurrecting him from the dark tranquility of the water. The last thing Jack remembers is dying—the first thing Jack remembers is dying. It's close enough to all he remembers.

But the Man in the Moon also left him with the ice in his veins. Something to console him for dying too soon, he supposes, but did the other Guardians have to die in order to live forever? It doesn't matter; he's still in debt to the moon. He treasures those powers more than life—more than love. That's what got him into this mess.

"But Jack, you sacrificed yourself for your sister, too!" He can hear Elsa's voice as plainly as if she is beside him in the air, clear and high and desperate. "An act of true love _gave_ you your ice powers!"

"No," he told her bitterly. "Dying alone in the cold gave me ice powers. Saving my sister was an added bonus." He looked at his hands, tendons tightening with all his anger at the quiet moon. He flung one of them toward Anna in a furious point. "Look at Anna! She was all noble and self-sacrificing for _her_ sister, and I don't see Anna the Ice Princess flouncing about—"

"Too much time for thinking on this journey," Jack says to the deserted abyss of the sky. But he knows he's drawing it out, still dawdling; he could be there already. Elsa made the journey in hours on foot, and he has the wind behind him, below him. He's drifting.

Why not? He's already screwed it up. What more could go wrong?

Only each new citizen of Arendelle who dies of hypothermia, starvation, or hopelessness for each minute that he leaves them trapped in this shroud. Only the weakening children, like Alva and Embla, whose pallid faces he brushed with hands as cold as their own. As cold as death.

He whispers the wind a little faster, but not fast enough.

-o-

Jack hums a little to keep the silence away. He's not much of a singer, but since that first moment he saw Elsa crest the icy ridge, belting her liberty to the mountain air, he's liked music for destroying the silence that entangles him. He didn't expect it, no, but the sheer exultation of her song, the unadulterated _relief_ in her every motion, made it impossible to look away from her. At first, he was bewildered by the disconnect—between the absolute essential delight in fresh air, fresh snow, a clear voice and the pleasure of holding winter in the palm of her hand; and the apparent age of her, which seemed physically much greater than her childlike bliss. She wasn't young enough for him to call her his charge, his... responsibility, if you will. As if he ever took responsibility. But she looked so _young_.

And then she called the castle.

Her foot slammed down, that furious joy singing fractals into the snow. It rose in spiraling glorious walls of light and color—not as he'd imagined it, building itself piece by piece, some invisible machine placing in blocks of glass to render her splendor in crystal, but instead a perfect ice sculpture born of her imagination and streaking upward in swift spirals of stars and jagged recreations of snowflakes and icicles, the softest aspects of winter side-by-side with the harshest. Jack darted inside just before the vaulted ceiling closed and nearly found himself impaled by the chandelier as it blossomed beneath him into ultramarine razors.

He watched her throw her crown away from her, watched it skid over the edge of the balcony and into oblivion, and remembered, _The_ _queen did this?_

She remade herself into a glittering monarch of the mountain, clothed in the skin of a glacier and the coldest tears of distant stars. Ice limned her every border, coruscated with every movement, nearly blinded him in the rising sun. She was winter incarnate, and what was he but a spirit of winter?

"This is going to be fun," he said, and grinned.

-o-

Jack knew that it would be harder to make Elsa believe in him; he had no one to tell her his name, and she was not really a child, not to be convinced of a strange spirit's present just by a few pretty shapes in the snow. He looped around her for hours, writing elaborate spirals into the smooth glass of her castle walls, calling up frosty facsimiles of fuzzy animals to frolic around her. The first of his frost spirals seemed to scare her—it spread across the glazed floor in front of her and she cried out, stumbling backwards, red streaking the ice at her feet like blood frozen deep below the surface.

"No, hey, it's okay," Jack said, backing off, palms up in surrender as if she could hear him, see him. She didn't react, just stared at his filigree creations, taking deep, calming breaths. In a flash of emotion, she flung two icy bolts at the floor, pitting the crystal where Jack had drawn in the frost.

"Now that's just uncalled for," he said, but he figured he'd better skip the technique where he just wrote _my name is Jack Frost_ in the skim of ice; it would probably traumatize her. He would have to do this the hard way.

Slowly, she stretched out her hands, and the frost flowers uncoiled themselves from the floor, twisting into the air like butterflies with wings of spiky white webs. They fluttered and danced across the entrance hall and Elsa—hesitantly, as though she'd forgotten how—laughed. The sound echoed off the clear walls, the high ceiling—the reverberations only made her laugh harder, until Jack was laughing with her, their entwined delight a chorus only he could hear. "Now you're gettin' it!" he crowed, jumping around her as she spun, her glittering cape twisting around her. The snowflakes at her fingertips turned to ice crystals to mimic his frost patterns; they whirled across the floor, smoothing out the spiderweb cracks in the translucent surface. Elsa danced like she was born to it—as a princess, surely someone must have taught her to waltz—and Jack skipped in and out around her—"whoops, sorry—wooooah!—almost got me there—sorry, I'm not as good at this as you—"

The pattern of their footsteps left lacy records of their passing, detailing their dance in the castle itself; and as Jack danced around the winter queen, invisible, silent, only pretending he was her partner in this arctic dance, he wondered how anyone could stand to be alone.

-o-

She nearly perforated the first innocent snow animal he made for her, a smooth-furred rabbit—his favorite, since he'd showed it to Jamie that day Pitch nearly won the war against belief. She shrieked, whipping several shards of ice at the bunny, which gave a startled leap and hopped away, losing a few threads of gelid fur. "It's a _bunny_," Jack said, hands flung out in bewilderment. "Why would you attack a _bunny_?" He paused, shoving his hands back in his pockets. "Well I guess the Easter Bunny can be pretty smug."

Elsa was staring at his creation again, like she couldn't believe its existence—and she couldn't, that was really the problem, she couldn't believe he was here, building things just for her, not yet. "You know," he said, crouching down to scratch under the rabbit's chin as it hopped back toward him in alarm, "I _could_ be out playing with some kids who actually get me. Right now. We could be having a lot more fun. You could be a _little_ more grateful."

Finally, she shook her head and looked away. "Don't be stupid, Elsa," she muttered, conjuring little snowflake birds with nervous snaps of her fingertips. That was the first time he heard her name, and he seized it, smiling, even as she kept talking to herself. "You can't make snow animals without even trying." She hesitated. "Can I?"

"I dunno, probably not," said Jack, his smile fading. "But you _didn't_. It was me! Hello! Ugh." He tilted his head back in exasperation. "I should just go." The rabbit dissolved in a spray of fragmented pearls. "I know your name, but you're never going to know mine."

Elsa pointed one finger at the gently drifting particles of the vanished snow-animal, and they coalesced back into a rabbit, its fur longer, threaded with silver, more detailed than his had been. Wrists resting on his knees, Jack watched it hop away from him again; Elsa knelt down to hold out her hand for it to sniff, bringing herself to the same level as Jack. He shifted his gaze to her, pretending for another instant that she could see him, but she wasn't even looking in his direction.

He stood up, scuffing one bare foot on the mirrorlike floor. He almost did leave then; he'd spent three hundred years talking to people who couldn't hear him, he didn't need anymore. Already the silence of the thin mountain air was starting to press in on him, throwing his own voice back at him with a quality that mocked him for his isolation. It reminded him too harshly of his moon-imposed solitude, and he refused to inflict that on himself again.

Except for when Elsa looked at the rabbit, let it sniff her fingertips—_made_ it sniff her fingertips, since it had no life of its own, only the animation imparted on it by its creators—he saw the expression deep in her eyes of utter desolation, of an all-too-familiar loneliness masked behind a glacial blue.

Jack slid his foot under his staff, lying prone beside him, and flipped it up to his hand. In one smooth motion, he pivoted, staff pointed outward, calling up bouncing fleecy creatures in shades of ice and snow. They pulled themselves out of the floor, leaping into three dimensions—more rabbits, a kindle of kittens, a gamboling arctic fox. Rolling across the glassy surfaces, they gathered around Elsa, surrounding her with an assembly of enthusiastic all clamoring to be her friends.

But they were all only Jack. And they were all cold.

That was probably the moment she started to believe there was someone else in the room with her.

-o-

The first time she saw him, she almost took his head off. She turned around like she could feel someone following her, and he could see it in the widening of her eyes, the way her mouth opened slightly, the shock that held her frozen. Jack had come to know that expression by heart—had come to love it, that moment when he wasn't invisible anymore. It made all the hours of silence worth it every time.

"Hey," he said, his grin so wide it hurt. "I'm Jack Frost."

The palisade of icicles came straight for his throat.

"Hey, hey, hey!" Jack shouted, ducking, spraying a flurry of snowflakes from the end of his staff. But he didn't stop grinning, and when he looked back up, Elsa was lowering her hands, looking uncertain but not—perhaps because there was no fear in his eyes, only absolutely glee, at finally being seen, at being able to share the spirit of winter with someone, at being able to stave off the loneliness one more time—maybe because Jack was not afraid of her, Elsa did not look afraid.


	6. Someone in the Room

A/N: Did a lot of word wars during this chapter, so the characterization is really rushed/a little weak. I'd apologize for that, but this is NaNoWriMo, so I'm not sorry. :p

Also boring movie stuff in this chapter, I am sorry for that, but it had to be done. p:

6 (Someone in the Room)

"So," he said, sitting cross-legged on the chilled floor, staff in the crook of his elbow, "the singing?"

He grinned as she flushed. She looked around like she was searching for a chair, then discarded the necessity; she no longer had to be queenly or sit properly, so she dropped herself onto the floor in front of him. Her crystalline skirt gave her some trouble; she fussed with it for a few minutes while Jack watched her, trying to contain himself.

"My mother used to sing to us," she said finally, "when we were kids. Anna and I used to—" She hesitated. "Anna's… my sister." Jack nodded enthusiastically.

"I had a sister, too."

"Had?" Elsa repeated. "Did she—your ice powers didn't—?"

"No, no," Jack said hastily. "She's still ali—" He stopped; he actually didn't know. He'd found out while playing with the town children that he'd undershot his own era by several decades, but she should still be living, right? He could go visit her. She'd be—she'd be a _grown-up_, but he knew she would still believe, he'd be able to make her believe in him.

"I got my ice powers after I saved her life, actually."

"Oh." Elsa frowned. "That's… weird."

"It kind of was," Jack said ponderously.

"No, I just mean—an act of true love, it shouldn't have given you _ice_ powers. 'True love thaws a frozen heart.' _Thaws. _Not parents always used to say that," she added, looking disgusted, a little sad. "I think they were waiting for me to grow up so some prince would fall in love with me and… make these powers go away."

Jack made a face, a noise of disdain. "What? Do _you_ want that?"

Elsa snorted, a very un-queen-like sound. "I don't need some prince to make my life easier," she said angrily. Snowflakes burst like sparks at her fingertips. "And besides…" She took a deep breath, and the exploding snow subsided. "I don't want to get rid of them. I just want to… to learn to control them." She clenched her fists, looking down at her bare hands like she was still getting used to the sight of them.

"You want to _learn_ to control them?" Jack repeated in disbelief, jumping to his feet, before he remembered he was trying not to alarm Elsa and sat back down. "You—your—" He shook his head. "I've been around for three hundred years and I haven't got as much control as you." He gestured at the castle around them, waving his staff zealously. "A _castle_? Elsa—uh, Your Majesty—"

"No, please, Elsa."

"—Elsa, you made a _castle_. Out of _ice_. And it's perfect!" He flicked his staff and sent a pattern of frost ferns racing across the nearest wall. "Except for a little interior decoration, of course," he added, grinning. "My own touch."

Elsa was frowning again though. "Do you really think so?"

"Think what?"

"That it's… perfect."

Jack let out a shout of laughter and skipped back to his feet, twirling his staff up onto his shoulders. "Did you _look_ at it?"

"I—Everyone—"

She stopped talking and hurried to stand, tangling her feet in her skirt. "I heard something—someone's—here?"

Jack followed her back down the grand staircase, where a strawberry-blonde girl with twin braids was peering in the great glass doors. "Anna?" Elsa said, and he was forgotten, he was invisible again—well, Anna couldn't see him—and anyway, he thought he should probably give Elsa some privacy to talk to her sister. He swiveled around and soared back into the crystalline labyrinth of corridors. Elsa had already given him a tour, giddy with the joy of showing her creation to someone else, someone who appreciated it, but there were some towers they had missed, those high minarets that she couldn't reach because she, at least, couldn't fly—one thing he could do better than her. He swooped up into the highest towers, which tapered into belfries he could hardly squeeze into; laughing, he folded himself upside against the ceiling, reveling in the dizziness that came from gazing down the narrow empty space, the vertigo increased by the circular reflections of perfect walls of ice. After a few minutes, he let himself drop; wind rushed past him, whipping his hair back; his arms splayed, he let out a yell that echoed out behind him.

In the last few moments, he twisted his staff around, aiming it toward the floor; it landed straight up, and he alighted on top of it just as the sound of Elsa shouting came bouncing off the corridor toward him.

She sounded panicked, her voice quavering—and just for a moment, the disembodied call of "Jack? _Jack!" _reminded him of being tricked by Pitch Black into descending into the earth, into abandoning the Guardians—his friends—when they needed him.

He shook the memory off and ducked down another hallway, following the echoes to Elsa. She looked upset—to be expected, from her cries—her eyes wild, her shoulders hunched, a red sheen to her aqua dress. "Jack," she said urgently, for the umpteenth time.

"Yeah?"

"You knew? Did you know?"

"Know _what_?"

"The winter is everywhere. It's in Arendelle!"

"Um, yeah? How did you _not_ know?"

Elsa made a noise of intense frustration, pivoting, slamming ice spears into the wall. "How could you not tell me?"

"How could you _not know_ you turned all of summer into winter? You froze the _fjord_."

"I can't believe this!" She stormed away from him; he followed her, making idle trails of frost flowers over the cracked walls. "I just wanted to come out here where I wouldn't hurt anyone, and instead I set off some—some _eternal winter_?"

"Oh, come on," said Jack. "Eternal? How could you know that?"

She stopped, giving him a startled look over her shoulder. "What?"

"It could last a hundred years and then go away," he pointed out. "That wouldn't be eternal." He shrugged, letting his staff slide into the crook of his elbow. "It _could_ thaw next week. Or maybe your summer is just your winter now, and next winter will be summer! Who says it's eternal?"

"Jack, that doesn't matter."

He shrugged again. "Alright. I'm just saying. You're making a pretty big deal out of this."

"It's a big deal! I froze Arendelle!"

"And it's _great!"_ he shouted back at her, flinging his arms wide in emphasis. She blinked. "Am I the only one around here who's noticed how much _fun_ snow is? Have you never had a snowball fight, or what?"

"Jack—"

"No, that's it." Hiding a grin, he grabbed her wrist and started pulling her toward the entranceway once again. "We're going outside. We've been cooped up in here talking all about the Guardians and your sister and _wow_ is that boring! Snowball fight."

"Unhand me, Jack! I'm the queen!"

"Nope, you gave that up, you said it yourself." They were halfway down the stairs; she was struggling, but nervously, not enthusiastically, not as if she were trying to get away but more as if she were trying not to smile. Jack let his grin show, triumphant—

And a very distinct roaring came echoing through the foyer.

The pair came to an abrupt halt, nearly slipping down the stairs together before they caught their balance—separately, Jack letting go of Elsa to keep his hold on his staff. "Uh," he said. "Elsa? What's… roaring?"

"I… made a snowman," she said.

Jack nodded. "Always a good idea," he said calmly. And then, with less tranquility—"Your snowman _roars_?"

"I'll go see what he's roaring at," she said hastily, lifting the hem of her skirt and running down the stairs. She cracked open the massive door, peering out, then retreated with even more urgency than she had approached.

"We have to get out of here," she said, dashing past him. Jack could hear shouting, more roaring, but he couldn't make out any words; he hesitated, then turned to go after Elsa.

"Hey, what's going on?"

"It's—oh, I don't know, some men—I think Anna's fia—friend is with them…"

"If she's your sister's friend—?"

"He's not _my_ friend."

The doors burst open, two armed thugs pursuing them through the crystal maze. Jack wanted to stop and fight, but Elsa looked so terrified that he found himself going continually after her, wanting to make sure she was okay. She was muttering under her breath, fists clenched, the walls glowing colors he hadn't seen before, such _angry_ shades of scarlet and cyan; he wanted to reach out to her, but she wouldn't slow down.

"Elsa—"

It was like she didn't even hear him, and the sharp grunting shouts of the thugs pursued them, until they were on the top floor, in the room with the chandelier where he had first seen her. Jack leapt over her, flipping to face her, landing on the vast snowflake design in front of her so she was forced to stop. "Elsa, it's okay, if you're in danger we can fight—"

"I don't want to fight anyone!" she snapped, ice chips shattering out of the air around her. "I don't want to hurt anyone—"

He should have noticed that fear then. He saw it, of course; it was impossible to miss the way her eyes widened, her voice shook, she kept looking for a way out. But he should have realized the way the terror possessed her was familiar, was all too close to the look of someone who could be far too easily convinced to believe in the Bogeyman.

But he didn't have time—the uniformed thugs charged into the room; Elsa gasped, and spun, hands held out, pleading. Furious, Jack moved to stand beside her, staff pointed at her attackers as the crossbow fired.

Elsa flinched, and Jack never really knew if the transparent shield that leapt from the ground was her doing or his; the past few days of seeing what their powers could do together had turned mimicry into a meld, she picking up those intricate tangles of frost and he collecting a fondness for smooth walls. The bolt stuck deep in the shield, whoever had raised it; Elsa looked up, startled; Jack lunged forward, blasting several thorny streaks of ice toward the thugs. Galvanized by his attack, Elsa joined in; ice sliced upward from the floor, but their assailants skidded away, far more nimbly than they should have been able to move on such unstable footing. The agony written into Elsa's expression, like she wanted to cry but couldn't let herself, drove Jack to fury like he couldn't remember feeling since Sandy had died; while Elsa threw more desperate barrages of icicles, Jack launched himself upward, rebounding off the wall and reversing himself to land behind and between the two thugs. His staff lashed out; jagged ice spears accompanied sharp blows from the frosted wood, and the assailants finally stumbled.

"There's someone else in the room!" one shouted**,** but the other shook his head, grunting, "Just her ice powers!"

"Nope, there's definitely someone else," Jack muttered, but he backed off—he didn't want them to believe in him, to actually _believe_ there was someone else here; it would be much easier to fight them if he stayed invisible. He swung himself back around to stand by Elsa again, trying to match his ice attacks to hers, though hers were always smoother, like frozen silk, and his always had something lacy about the edges….

Not that these goons would recognize the difference; they clearly weren't discerning enough to understand the beauty of what he and Elsa could create.

The thugs spread out, encircling the two of them; Jack spun, staff aiming at one while he muttered, "Elsa, you take—"

She didn't wait for him to finish; it was as if she couldn't even hear him anymore. Spears as long as he was tall and as clear as pure water slid out of the ground, spiking one attacker to the wall. "Nice," said Jack, impressed, whipping around to re-aim his staff at the other; again, Elsa beat him two it, his staff barely sparkling with frost by the time she had thrown several more translucent barriers at the thug. Slowly, inevitably, the final one sped toward the assailant, pressing him backwards, struggling; Jack winced as the intricately-carved frozen doors shattered, both lamenting the loss of the stunning creation and flinching in irresistible sympathy for the pain of ice-glass shredding the thug's back.

He was on the very edge of the balcony when the rest of the men charged in.

Jack leapt straight up, grabbing onto the pinpoint center of the hanging chandelier, wanting both a better vantage point for assessing the attack that was no doubt coming and for retaliating towards more people at once. One hand held him dangling from the sharp glass—he could feel it cutting into his palm; perhaps he should have thought out this plan a little bit more, but Jack had never been one for _planning_—the other clutched his staff as he tried to point it three directions at once.

"Queen Elsa," said the man in front, who seemed to know her as more than the faceless enemy the other thugs were treating her as. Perhaps this was her sister's friend; he seemed kinder, anyway. Jack frowned.

"Please. Don't be the monster they fear you to be."

"The _what_?" Jack said loudly, furiously. "A _what_? She's not a monster, you—"

Only Elsa could hear him, but she glanced up, away from the crossbow bolt rising steadily to aim for her heart. The man who was talking noticed, though, and lunged; the crossbow shifted, the bolt pointed straight for Jack instead.

He said something he would never say in front of children and let go of the chandelier. The bolt cut cleanly through the ice holding it to the ceiling, and he had no time to maneuver; Elsa started to run, Jack started to fall, and the whole thing came crashing down.


	7. If You're Real, Bleed for Me

A/N: Soon I get to go back to _glorious angst. _Which possibly nobody appreciates as much as I do. In the meantime, have some more of that fluff I'm so terrible at writing. :p

FIRST SNOW! where I live today. In celebration (only because it's appropriate, I don't actually love snow very much), what do you think, want two chapters today?

7 (If You're Real, Bleed for Me)

Jack awoke with blood still crusting his face, his hands, his bare feet. When he moved, groaning, mumbling incoherently, some of the scabs broke, sending new trickles of red across his frostbitten skin. His hoodie had saved him from the worst of the liberated chandelier's shattering, but it hurt to close his hand around his staff; it hurt to brush his sodden hair, flaky with dried blood, out of his blurry vision; it hurt to stand up, the bottoms of his feet stinging as they took his weight.

"Not fair," he muttered, brushing shards of ice from the folds of his clothing, wincing as he smeared blood across the fabric. "I'm a spirit of winter. I _died_ once already. I shouldn't still have to bleed."

Sighing, he rubbed the sleeve of his sweatshirt across his eyes, trying to clean out the worst of the blood. One cut over his eye wouldn't stop bleeding; the sensation of cool water running down the side of his face reminded him that even if he bled, he wasn't really alive. The liquid in his veins was still as cold as his skin.

"Definitely not fair," he added darkly, and looked around.

The men were gone. Elsa was gone.

The hand not holding his staff clenched into a fist, which hurt still more as his nails dug into his fresh cuts. "Ow," he said loudly, and opened it to watch the blood drip onto the floor. He was standing in a thin, streaky pool of it, the edges fading to a murky brown. At least he probably couldn't die from blood loss. Or from falling fifty feet and having a chandelier fall on him.

"Ugh," Jack said, and stepped away, leaving frost-feathered scarlet footprints on the pitted and cracked glacial floor as he wove painfully around the slanted barricades Elsa had left scattered around the room. "Elsa?" he called tentatively, in case she was here, in another room—but he couldn't imagine she would have just left him bleeding on the floor. He stood in one of the arched doorways for a moment, peering down the hall, then turned and leapt back for the broken balcony, bouncing off walls like he was inside a pinball machine.

Standing on the brink, his lacerated feet curled over the very edge, Jack looked down at the mountain, streaked with night. He didn't know what had happened to Elsa, but he guessed the men who'd attacked had probably taken her away. Probably back to Arendelle. Her sister, who was presumably queen by now, since Elsa had abdicated—rather forcefully, from what he gathered, though maybe not in a particularly official manner—would undoubtedly set that right, would order Elsa set free again.

And he, Jack—he was free, wasn't he? He could go wherever he wanted. He had no reason to go after Elsa, no reason to believe she _needed_ him to go after her. His sister was still out there, across the ocean, and a hundred friends in between, he was sure. Or he could just go home; he'd been to Arendelle, spreading magical Guardian cheer to some children, he could tell North he'd done as promised and go back to entertaining his friends.

Elsa wouldn't be so alone once she was back with her sister. She'd be lucky. Jack wanted to be back with _his_ sister; a part of him wanted it every day, wanted to hear her shrieking laugh, see her accusing stare when she knew he was messing with her again. Elsa wouldn't even remember him, wouldn't have time to believe he'd abandoned her.

Jack jumped.

-o-

He went after Elsa. Of course he went after Elsa.

He didn't know how long he was unconscious, except that the sun was on the horizon when they were attacked, and it was full dark when he awoke. That could be hours or days; he didn't let himself worry about which. The sun rose while he was soaring back to Arendelle proper, drenching him and the wind both in pastel rays of hope that looked altogether too much like the colors on one of Bunny's eggs.

Summer reined again in Arendelle, sunlight draping itself in waves across the land, scintillating with what Jack imagined was unreasonable smugness. He bulleted over the fjords, patterns of ice making ripples on the surface below him, and he had to take a moment—just a moment—to dwell on the fact that Elsa had _completely frozen over_ the fjord. When Jack had been younger, he'd spent a lot of time off the coast of Ireland and the United Kingdom, cavorting with mermaids and trying to freeze bits of the ocean. He only ever managed to solidify himself a bobbing floe to rest on the bright seafoam-façade of the water. Freezing the fjords was undoubtedly easier than the ocean—but he could still barely imagine it.

So what, Jack couldn't help but think, could make her unfreeze it? And he carefully didn't imagine that Elsa's death would undo all that power.

-o-

When he reached the castle, there was a calm settled over it, reflecting off the summer sun and the lazy estival winds. No mourning black draped the windows; no tattered black flags flew from the towers, just the shadows of drifting clouds.

Jack could've walked in the front doors—who would see him to stop him? He was still an invisible creature here, a bit of superstition, frosty kisses on window panes and the wind rattling the glass in a season so easily forgotten. He could have gone anywhere, but he didn't; he crept from window ledge to window ledge, looking for Elsa, afraid she would see him and afraid she would not.

At last he found her, poring over a heavily-illustrated book with the strawberry-blonde he knew to be her sister. Anna was talking incessantly, waving her hands; Elsa had a quiet smile, more focused on her sister than the pages of the book. Jack didn't intend to interrupt, he didn't mean to break that contented buzz of summer and conversation—but one hand stretched out, pressing against the glass as if he meant to push the window open. A thin silhouette, Elsa dancing, a spray of ice ascending from her upraised hands, curled across the glazing.

The motion caught the real Elsa's eye; she looked up, away from Anna, and frowned. He saw her lips move in the shape of his name, questioning. Hesitantly, he urged the window open, stepping down into the room.

"Jack, what are you doing here? Are you okay?"

"A chandelier fell on me, but no big deal," he said, raising an eyebrow. Elsa opened her mouth to respond, but Anna interrupted.

"Elsa, who are you talking to?"

Elsa paused, then said, "Anna, this is Jack Frost." Jack smiled thinly, expecting confusion and a belabored attempt to make him appear—but Anna looked at the space toward which Elsa was gesturing, and her eyes widened.

"What? Oh! He just—he appeared. Out of nowhere. Is that normal? I don't think that's normal!"

And just like that, Anna believed in him. Her sister pointed and Anna automatically had faith that her sister was right, that there was someone standing in that empty space. He'd never had someone learn to see him so quickly, and the feeling that shivered in his heart approximated warmth.

"Elsa, what happened?" he asked hurriedly, to cover it. "Who were those guys?"

Elsa smiled wryly. "Their leader was the man my sister wanted to marry."

"Your sister has terrible taste."

Elsa gestured to Anna. "Jack, this is my sister, Anna."

"I know," he said, and grinned. Anna threw a cushion at him. He immediately knew they were going to be friends.

"Jack, please don't take this the wrong way, but are you… real?" Elsa asked, distracting Jack from the projectile pillow just in time for him to fail at dodging it. He made a face at her and said,

"Course I'm real. What else would I be?"

"I thought… I thought I made you. Like Olaf."

"Olaf," Jack repeated.

"I'll get him!" Anna said brightly, and went scrambling for the door, calling, "Olaf! Oooooolaf! We have a friend for—oof! Olaf!"

She returned a few minutes later with a snowman waddling in her wake. "Hi, I'm Olaf and I like warm hugs!" he declared, with the air of ritual. "Who's this?"

"Olaf, this is Jack."

"Oh. I was hoping it would be another Sven. Jack, can I call you Sven? It would make it easier for me."

"No." Jack crouched down in front of Olaf, examining him intently. "Cute," he said. "I wonder if I could make snow talk. Or is one of you a ventriloquist here?"

"He—he doesn't just talk," said Elsa hesitantly. "He's… alive. For whatever value of the word, I guess."

Very slowly, Jack lowered himself to the floor, clinging to his staff for support. "You said you made him?"

"Yes."

"You… created life."

"…Yes. I guess?"

"You _created life_! You made a living thing!"

"That's not very nice," said Olaf indignantly, waving his stick arms. "I'm right here you know!"

"Could you do it again?" Jack asked excitedly, standing up. "Make Olaf a buddy or something?"

"But I _have_ buddies," the snowman insisted. "I have Anna and Elsa and Sven and Sven—unless you mean—" His eyes went wide, and he lowered his voice to a not-very-subtle loud whisper. "—a _lady buddy_."

"I could try," said Elsa dubiously, waving her hand in quick spirals, creating a double of Olaf with long twiggy hair, pointy feet, and the suggestion of an hourglass figure.

"Beeeeautiful," Olaf said dreamily, but the snowwoman did not leap to life and join Olaf in song. Jack sank back against a chair and Elsa looked upset.

"I'm sorry! My powers… haven't been as strong since—"

"Since we got rid of eternal winter?" said Anna brightly.

"Would you guys stop with that," said Jack, "you don't know it was eternal—"

"'An act of true love can thaw a frozen heart,'" recites Anna. "That's what the trolls told me. You're just… a little thaw-y right now! It'll get better. Probably. Or I mean maybe it won't. And would that really be a bad thing? If you can't start another eternal winter then—"

"Anna."

"Okay, okay, sorry, no need to get touchy about it."

"Anna, Olaf, could you two give Jack and I some time to talk alone?"

"Ooooooh, he's one of _those_ boys," said Anna, flouncing in several enthusiastic circles.

"_Anna._"

"Alright, alright! Come on, Olaf." Anna marched the two of them to the door. "Just remember, Elsa, you can't marry a man you just met!"

The door slammed shut on her admonition, leaving Elsa and Jack alone with the failed snowwoman. Elsa gazed at it for a moment, then took it apart with an infuriated twist of her hand.

"An act of true love?" Jack asked.

"Anna sacrificed herself to save me from Hans—the intended fiancé," she added at his puzzled look. "Turns out he just wanted our kingdom, who knew. It—it turned her back to normal—"

"That's normal?"

"Normal for Anna. Not frozen, anyway. And it let me thaw the et—the unexpected winter," she corrected, lips twitching. Jack beamed, a little smugly.

"Sorry I left you," Elsa said, reaching out to touch the dried blood smeared down the side of his face. The cut over his eye finally stopped bleeding on his flight here; he hadn't even noticed. Her fingertips were cold, slender pinpricks of ice against his temple. "I thought—I made you up. That you were just snow."

"That's a pretty common mistake." Jack shrugged. "Do you believe I'm real now?"

Cautiously, she nodded. Jack looped himself up onto the crook of his staff so he could gaze down at her, smiling widely.

"Then can I stay? You know, for now."

He didn't really mean to ask it, it was an idiotic request, and now he was afraid she was going to say no. She wavered, then said, "I thought… you told me you were a Guardian of Childhood?"

"Well, yeah. But being cooped up all those years?" He dropped a foot to kick his own staff out from under him, twirling it up to balance on his shoulder and landing with his arms spread, bowing slightly. "Sounds like you didn't get much of a childhood yourself. Or Anna either," he added thoughtfully. "So you probably need a Guardian. As long as you believe in me, of course."

"I'll always believe in you," she said, and the smile she flashed him was as blinding as sun shining over the fresh-fallen snow, as brilliant as sunrise through a row of icicles. "I'd love it if you stayed."


	8. Smile and Pray You're Not Afraid

A/N: I expect I'm shooting myself in the foot with posting these chapters so fast, because nobody has time to tell me what they think of the chapter before the next one is written, but… guys, check-in time! I gain a lot from writing fanfiction (seriously, I've learned so much as a writer just from writing this story already, it's bizarre), but I gain so much more with feedback. How am I doing on characterization? I feel I know Jack better than Elsa, but I'm worried I'm not capturing either of them. How's the pacing? Are you confused about chronology? I'm not planning to make edits in what I've written so far, but critique can help me adjust where I'm going! Thanks in advance. (:

ON ANOTHER NOTE (so excited), guys, I had a real live short story published yesterday! Since if you're here, reading this right now, you probably enjoy my writing, I thought I would share this with you: expandedhorizons-dot-net/magazine/?page_id=3592 (Wow, FFN really doesn't like links, huh? Don't forget to remove the hyphens when you replace 'dot.') Cheers!

8 (Smile and Pray You're Not Afraid)

It hurts to think of them being happy, but Jack forces himself through every memory, cataloguing them, punishing himself. He remembers how hard he always had to work for those smiles, how he never regretted it. Jack may not like responsibility, but he isn't a stranger to effort. He remembers houseplants bursting into staggering arrays of icicles, crystal sculptures instantly replacing what had previously been living plants. "I don't know why we keep those around," he remembers Elsa saying irritably, looking up from the officious document she was perusing with intense concentration and a slight frown. "I only keep killing them."

"Nah," said Jack, bending over it to peer into its faceted depths. "I think it might actually still be alive in there."

Elsa repressed a disbelieving laugh and returned to her reading. She sat with perfect posture, back absolutely straight, hands folded in her lap, hair braided over one shoulder. Jack didn't know how she did it. He'd be leaning over the table with both hands in his hair and frustration radiating off him. Actually, to be honest he wouldn't still be sitting there at all; he'd have broken the window in his hurry to escape. Elsa's discomfort showed only in her barely- perceptible frown and the way the paper crackled with frost when she unrolled more of it.

There was _more_ of it, Jack noted with disgust.

Rolling his eyes, Jack strolled over to read over her shoulder, leaning as close as he could without touching her shoulder. He grinned as she just barely shifted away from him, knowing how distracting he was being.

"Jack, I'm going to have to start forbidding you—"

"'Weasel- town'?" he said over her, reading off the page with one eyebrow cocked. Elsa gave an unwilling giggle, which he considered progress.

"Yes, but don't say that to their faces, please."

"Oh I will," he assured her. He pulled out another chair, carved too ostentatiously to be comfortable, and flipped it around, draping his arms over its high back. "They really that weaselly?"

"The Duke is. His retainers attacked us in the ice palace." She sighed and ran a slight hand through her hair, mussing her bangs. He couldn't remember if she'd picked it up from him or he from her, but now they both made that exact same motion when upset. It happened a lot more frequently for her than him; Jack preferred not to waste energy on being upset when he could redirect it toward something more fun. "Unfortunately, it appears we're going to _have_ to reopen trade—hey!"

Jack had been slowly drifting away from her as she talked, a gelid slope formed beneath his chair to slide it backwards; when she looked up, a similar—though larger—ice- ramp took the whole table out of her reach. She snatched the document of it as it fled.

"Jack, I'm working."

"Too much work," he announced, gathering his feet under him to perch in a crouch on the seat of the chair. A gust of wind tossed the chair up onto one leg and sent it spinning across the ice. Jack threw his arms out for balance. "Let's go."

"I'm the _queen_ and Arendelle's in serious economic trouble—"

"The only word I got out of that was 'trouble.'"

"—I don't know what my parents were _thinking,_ closing our borders to trade for so long—" Her voice was growing steadily higher and louder; Jack and the chair stopped spinning, the chair slamming back onto all four legs hard enough to spiderweb the ice. Jack tried to refocus on Elsa through the silly grin and tilting vision brought on by dizziness.

"—just to keep me hidden—"

Jack scrambled over the back of the chair, knocking it to the ground where it went skidding away as he leapt free of it. "Woah, woah, hey," he said, darting back toward Elsa. Glittering fractals erupted across the document she was holding, rendering it unreadable. Elsa took a deep breath, and the ice receded, although the paper was soggy and ruined.

"Sorry," said Elsa dully. "I shouldn't—"

"Seriously? C'mon, Elsa, we're so past this." Jack grabbed his staff from the floor and twisted up the end to rip through the sodden document in Elsa's unhappy grip; it exploded in fragments of ice and inky snow. "You don't have to keep it in, remember? He settled the staff back onto his shoulder, standing over Elsa where she still sat. "C'mon, we'll go down to the gallery room—"

"The only reason Arendelle has any friends is because they're all afraid of me." Her voice had that carefully modulated tenor of heavy emotion blanketed by snow, and it made Jack crazy. Her release from the emotional restrictions of her entire childhood had opened the door for her—and Jack, standing on the other side, just wished she could be _through_ it already. He wanted her to be able to laugh without shame, throw snowflake- sparks without guilt, like it had seemed she would when she flung her battle song to the mountain sky. Like he had seen in her palace of ice, the architecture around her so cold and she herself so bright. But there was always something crouching inside of her, reminding her that when she _let it go_, all of Arendelle had suffered—and Jack knew that the habits carved into your psyche for years didn't go away just because you resolved to paint over them. He would never be able to let silence lie, or even really forgive the Man in the Moon. She might never lose that slight hesitation before she laughed.

He understood it. He hated it.

"And _I'm_ afraid," Elsa went on, carefully—because she _was_ trying, trying so hard to be able to admit it before it consumed her, and Jack put a cold hand on her shoulder like it could somehow help—"of the day when they _stop_ being afraid and attack us." She ran her hand through her hair again, leaving a feather of rime in the wake of the motion. It scintillated on her pale skin, curling past her eye, no heat flushing her face to make it melt. Jack found himself entranced by the delicacy of its webs; they rivaled his frost flowers for intricacy, and he was famous for them—_named_ for them.

"Jack, I'm _afraid_ they're going to stop being afraid of me," Elsa said. "Shouldn't I _want_ that? I don't _want_ people to fear me anymore."

"Then let 'em come," Jack said. He looped one arm through hers and pulled her off the chair. "Remember that one time I took on Pitch Black and his army of Nightmares?"

"You might have mentioned it," she said dryly, lips twitching. He grinned.

"So armies of people? Not a problem. You and me can definitely take them out."

"But then they'd only be scared again," she said quietly.

"Yeah, I guess that's a little counterproductive. _So_. Better idea." He started tugging her toward the door. "What if you won them over with your amazing ability to have _fun_ instead?"

"Jack, that does not even make sense."

"Sure it does!" He managed to get her out the door; immediately, they went skidding down the hallway, Jack having already iced the whole floor. Elsa sputtered with shock that turned into laughter as she shoved him away from her, sending them both careening toward the walls.

"See?" shouted Jack, planting his staff and pivoting up a spiraling ramp he had just raised, while Elsa skated on slippered feet toward the sitars, determined to beat him to the end of the hallway. Jack leapt over her head, crook of his staff catching onto a chandelier that jingled in alarm, reminding him distantly of the elves back at the North Pole. He swung forward, nearly dislodging the cascading chandelier—it wasn't the first time he had caused it such distress, and he expected (delightedly) that it wouldn't hold out much longer—and landed in front of Elsa on a glacier- like pillar that rose from the center of the carpet at the top of the stairs. Elsa slewed to a stop, twisting herself into a deft pirouette to avoid the pillar. Jack crouched down, elbows on his knees, looking downward into her eyes.

"See?" he said again, gaze sparkling as merrily as Christmas lights on the snow. "No one could be afraid of that smile."

Her elated expression caught, like a loose thread hooked over a protruding nail and stretched taut to unraveling. Then it steadied, and she flung a gust of snow at him, knocking him off the pillar. Chortling, Jack tumbled backward; Elsa swung her legs over the banister, skirts flying—though never indecently, she couldn't relax that much—and slid down, cackling, while Jack skated after her, drawing frosty ribbons in his wake.

-o-

They burst into the gallery room laughing so hard they both could hardly stand. Elsa's outstretched hands turned the floor into a flawless ice rink, clear enough to see the striated texture of the wood in absolute detail. Jack destroyed it, rupturing an obstacle course of ramps and dips and spiral slides into the lustrous surface. The two of them threw themselves across the floor under the disapproving eyes of the portraited walls. Anna came storming in several minutes later, loudly demanding to know why they were having so much fun without her, Olaf toddling in her wake. At some point, Kristoff peered in through the doors, lamenting that _he_ was going to have to start running the kingdom if no one here was going to take responsibility. ("The majestic pungent reindeer king!" Olaf shouted, his proudest description of Kristoff.) Anna grabbed his hand as she caromed past, dragging him into an unsteady glide that ended with them both toppling. A quick burst of snow, from Jack or Elsa or both, caught them before they earned any bruises.

Jack didn't know if his grin or Elsa's was wider, and as he spun past her, he heard her breathe a hasty prayer for this to last.

-o-

Even as he descends, Jack's thinking about not doing this. He's getting closer—not as close as h should be—but every expanse of smoky cloud and inky night between him and Elsa is another stretch of space where he could change his mind, not accept responsibility, go back. It's not that he isn't brave; no one can say that Jack Frost isn't brave. He threw himself head on into a tidal wave of nightmare sand in furious retaliation for the death of his friend. He would throw himself into darkness to save Elsa—and Anna, and all of Arendelle's children—without hesitation. But there's this lingering, clinging doubt, like cobwebs he can't get out of his eyes. Because he caused it, because maybe he can't fix it.

Because maybe she doesn't want it to be fixed.

Diving toward the mountain peaks—not the North Mountain, not yet, he has another stop to make first—Jack considers all the things that could be more fun than this. He could spiral off, cross the sea, and go meet himself, he thinks. His past self, not quite out of his first century of frosty fusillade and surges of snow. If he concentrates—and concentrating is good, he needs to focus on something besides the tasks before him, coming straight for him in the form of jagged mountain silhouettes like broken blades aiming for his heart—he can backtrack through his travels to find where he was this year. Was it that sudden snowstorm in Greece, or the run of blizzards in Austria?

"No, Ireland," he corrects himself as he skids to a landing on a brumal mountain slope. His momentum carries him all the way down, knees bent, staff tucked under his arm, like a skier who's forgotten all his equipment, who's forgotten everything but his need for the cold. "Those mermaids off the coast—and that one redhead—what was her name?" But no—best not to think of redheaded mermaids now.

He casts his mind away—to other girls, but that always leads back to Elsa, so his thoughts skitter away again, never still, just like he is never still. The snow thins beneath his footsteps, trailing off until he can see patches of emerald moss through the threadbare quilt of white. One hand in the pocket of his sweatshirt, he twirls his staff idly with the other. The staff that he saved his sister once. There's another girl it hurts to think about.

He did go see her, right after he died. She couldn't see him, of course she couldn't. And he was still too weak, too new for the power of belief to matter; he was nothing more than a spirit, a tattered wraith of wind and snow, a drifting ghost who could write her name in the snow but never speak to her and be heard. He wanted to tell her he was alright. It would've been a lie, but he wanted to tell her. He wanted to swing her around and around until she shrieked with laughter; he wanted to build her a snow fort grander than she'd ever seen, and help her rule as queen of the other children from her frosted throne. He went back a hundred times, but she couldn't see him any more than any other child.

Jack can almost taste her name on his tongue, from saying it over and over, soundless, until the word was sour in the back of his throat. After a while, it just started to hurt too much to see her laughing and not be seen in return.

After a while, he expects she died, but he never saw her that old.


	9. Of Kings and Cold

A/N: This chapter gets a bit silly, but I couldn't resist. :p It ends well though, and the next chapter is my favorite so far, so I hope you'll bear with me. C:

All reviewers are wonderful, thanks especially to the Guest reviewer(s) whom I cannot thank personally due to lack of replying ability, you are just as appreciated as those logged in. c: I really do live for my reviews, shhhhhh

9 (Of Kings and Cold)

The only places the ground is clear of snow entirely are the perfect circles around the heat vents blowing steam into the air. Jack stops to warm his hands at one, cradling his staff against his bicep. The warmth doesn't comfort him; it just reminds him of a lot of things he'll never have. It reminds him of how hard it was for him and Elsa to watch Kristoff and Anna being in love at the same time, in the same place. Anna and Kristoff had a warmth between them that Jack and Elsa could never touch.

Shuddering grimly, Jack backs away from the steam vent. And when he looks up—

"Kristoff?"

"Jack?" Then, just like Anna, Kristoff frowns and said severely, "Jackson Overland _Frost_, what are _you_ doing here?"

"Congratulations, you know my name, too!" Jack rolls his eyes. "Kristoff Probably-Doesn't-Even-_Have_-a-Last-Name-Because-He-Was-Raised-By-Trolls. What are _you_ doing here?"

"It's Bjorgman—"

"Don't make stuff up, it's rude. And frankly a little pathetic."

"—and didn't Anna tell you?"

"She told me you guys broke up."

"Well that's a little dramatic."

Jack gives him a pointed look. Kristoff sighs.

"Aaaaand I should've expected that."

"Yep." Jack pauses to take in Kristoff for the first time. A grin starts to spread across his face—this genuine smile, the kind he's hardly felt since being back in Arendelle, but he should've known that his friends would bring it back—and before long he's laughing, just full on doubled-over and guffawing so hard he's having trouble breathing.

"Seriously, Jack."

"Seriously? You want me to take you seriously?"

"Look, it's not—"

"Oh, it is. It so is."

"Jack, can you just stop laughing for like a _second_—"

"Aren't you—aren't you _cold_?"

Kristoff folds his arms over his bare chest. "I'm going to say it," he threatens.

"No—no, don't say it—"

"Then stop laughing."

"I really can't."

"Pretty sure I can make you."

"Okay, but—but _Kristoff_—"

"The cold never bothered me anyway," Kristoff says, and Jack shuts up.

There's a moment of silence, in which Kristoff looks at Jack with both eyebrows raised, and Jack's smile is gone. He hoped that the reminder of Elsa wouldn't be enough to shatter his mirth, but _Elsa_ and _happiness_ just aren't entwined inside him anymore.

Then Jack wipes lingering tears of laughter from his eyes and grins wryly at Kristoff, resting his staff across his shoulders like a yoke again. "I just never thought O—"

"If you say _one word_ about Olaf—"

"—Olaf would turn out to be _right_."

"Olaf was not _right_."

Jack looks Kristoff up and down. "'A valiant pungent reindeer king'?" he says.

Kristoff is dressed like just this: shirtless, wearing leggings under a kilt of some ragged pelt, a cape of fur, and a necklace of teeth that undoubtedly came from a vicious predator. An actual pair of reindeer antlers rises from his blond hair, draped with hanging moss and leaves woven in. Jack supposes he might look majestic, but he can only view the new ensemble as ridiculous.

"Jack, you might not have noticed, but Arendelle needs _help_."

"So you had to dress in… pelts?"

"I _always_ dress in pelts. They're just usually more… clothes-shaped."

Jack chortles again as Sven trots up behind Kristoff, chewing ponderously on something. His own antlers are strung with leaves, and half-melted candles rest in their branches.

"Seriously though, are you guys putting on a play? Is that your grand plan to save Arendelle?"

Kristoff pats Sven companionably, though he retains an exasperated expression for Jack's benefit. "There are things in the mountains, alright? Powerful things. You know, magical."

"Did the trolls make you dress up like that? That I would believe."

"No. _Other _things. Other spirits."

This, at least, Jack can understand; when he found himself cut off from humans and cut himself off from the Guardians—hundreds of years ago, otherwise known as _now_—he spent a lot of time talking to the spirits without shape, the spirits buried in the hills and the lakes and the storms. He nods to show Kristoff he gets it, but he still can't stop smiling.

Kristoff shrugs, scratching Sven under the chin. "I didn't think you were coming back." Jack keeps grinning, but it turns stony. "No offense. No, you know what? Lots of offense. All the offense!" Kristoff jabs a finger angrily in Jack's direction. "You turned Elsa into some—some—some evil snow queen, and then you _ran away_. I didn't think you were coming back. No one did. And that's your fault!"

"Yeah," says Jack. "It is."

Maybe he expected Jack to argue, because the quiet acquiescence seems to derail Kristoff. He stops, then gestures around him. "So we needed help. Even Grand Pabbie couldn't keep the snow out of the troll valley this time. I went looking."

"Well, you can stop looking," says Jack. "I'm here. I'll stop her."

"Okay," says Kristoff. "Sure. But in the meantime, I'm protecting the children."

There is nothing accusatory in Kristoff's tone, but the words go through Jack like a blade. Kristoff is protecting the children. Kristoff converted himself into some… ludicrous bare-chested reindeer king in order to save the children from the snow.

Jack can only make it snow harder.

He bows his head and says, "Thanks," and he doesn't think it sounds as bitter as it tastes.

Kristoff puts a hand on his shoulder, radiating a heat so strong Jack can feel it through the thick fabric of his hoodie. No wonder he's not cold. Jack looks up, smiling wryly, and Sven noses him, leaving a trail of reindeer drool across his front.

"Thanks for coming back," says Kristoff.

-o-

Jack had this plan where he was going to pull his mischief back around himself and stagger into the trolls' communal living area with three different tricks up his sleeve, but running into Kristoff changed that. Now he feels guilty and unsettled, and even another round of mocking Kristoff's new wardrobe can't inspire anew the desire to play jokes on the trolls. He knows he's forgetting his center. But the cold has settled into his heart in its place, and he can't conjure up the warmth to drive it back.

Once he asked Elsa what she thought her center would be, and that's what she said: "Cold."

"You're missing the point," he told her, but she couldn't think of anything else. "We'll find it," he assured her. "I found mine."

He wonders, if he just lets himself stay cold, if that's how it starts. If that's how it started with Elsa. She thought she was only ice inside, and so when Pitch came whispering, it was easy to believe him. Maybe it's just simpler to let the cold come in.

When the trolls roll themselves awake and swarm Kristoff, it's like being invisible again, except for the stony disapproval clearly radiating off them, aimed his way. They cheer and bicker and hug their adopted son and his drooling reindeer, and reserve all their disdain for his friend who caused all this trouble. Jack leans on his staff like he doesn't care, hands in his pockets, idly scuffing his foot in the snow. He's always caused trouble. The difference is, he used to do it on purpose.

Kristoff finally shakes off the last enthusiastic greeting and gestures Jack over. It's a good thing Jack ran into him after all; he expects the trolls might not have consented to talk to him if he hadn't brought their pride and joy with him. Jack strolls over, grinning at Kristoff with this sudden affection; Kristoff still believes in him. Kristoff can still see him. Jack feels stronger already.

"I came for some advice," Jack says to Grand Pabbie, despite the expression of intense grumpiness on the old troll's face.

"Only an act of true love can thaw a frozen heart," pipes up one of the younger trolls, like that's the only advice he needs.

"Will people stop _saying_ that to me?" he says exasperatedly, throwing his hands in the air.

"When you start listening again," says Pabbie soberly.

"I never _stopped listening." _Jack turns away, kicking up an irritated spray of snow. "Obviously I was listening! If I wasn't listening to your stupid mantra, I wouldn't have—" He stops, drawing in a harsh, ragged breath. The cold in the air is so thick it burns in his lungs.

"Would not have what, Jack Frost?" Pabbie knows the answer to this question, Jack is sure, but it seems he wants Jack to say it aloud. Jack doesn't know how. There are so many things he did incredibly, blindingly wrong. So _many_ different ways he hurt her. He can't just list them.

"Wouldn't have denied it," he mutters finally, crouching down to draw in the snow with his fingers. No magic—just stilted snowflake designs.

"It?"

"Don't make me get all cheesy, Pabbie." But the troll folds his arms and gives Jack a look he can't refuse. Jack sighs.

"My heart," he says. "Happy now?"

-o-

Kristoff wants to know why Jack doesn't just go back in time and stop it from happening. He time travels, after all. Jack retrieves the miniaturized clockwork snow-globe from his pocket and stares at it, the corner of his mouth turned up wryly.

"If you showed up and told yourself not to fall in love with Anna, would you do it?"

"Wait, what? No. That's totally different."

"Yeah." Jack pulls his knees up to his chest and folds his arms over them, the snow-globe still dangling from one hand, his staff clutched in the other. "Because the problem wasn't me falling in love. It was her."

"This isn't Elsa's fault."

"Hey, I didn't say it was." Jack sighs and tugs his hood up over his eyes. "I should sleep."

"You don't sleep. You're not getting out of this conversation that way."

"Didn't say I needed to sleep. Said I should. Pay attention."

"Why don't you just go back?"

"Look," Jack says, throwing his hood back again and tilting his head to look at Kristoff, who is sitting on a mossy boulder that might be his great uncle. "What do you expect to happen if I did go back? Tell me, O Wise King of Reindeers. How do I fix this?"

He stares at Jack for a moment, then shrugs. "Tell Elsa you love her."

"Elsa knows I love her," Jack snaps.

"Jack, you're an idiot."

"Thanks, I'd noticed." He buries his hands in his hair, leaving the silver strands with a veneer of pale feathery blue. "Elsa knows. She's waiting for me, up on the mountain. Unlike the rest of you, she always knew I would come back."

"Is that what makes this—"

"Don't say it!" Jack flings his head up so fast he almost gets whiplash. "Don't! It can't start now." He drags the end of his staff across the snow, and pale flakes like ash and angel wings begin to flurry and drift from the sky. They waltz into nebulous silhouettes of snow queens dancing, coalescing and drifting apart again.

"I'm not doing this," he says. The words are stilted, like a mantra he's repeated past the point of it having meaning, and he says it again: "I'm not doing this."

"What? Jack, you have to."

Jack gives him this look, eyes slitted, mouth set, this looks that says, _Come on, Kristoff, figure it out already. _"Do me a favor and try to have a little faith," he says. Frost creeps up his sleeves from his wrists. His head drops again, his voice muffled in his sweatshirt. "I know I have to do this. But I'm not going to. And I'm not gonna go back in time because I wouldn't be able to change my mind."

-o-

He walks out of the troll valley, skating up iced-over trails and weaving between cliffs and crags until he is as high as he can go. The sky sprawls out above him, brushed with powdered-sugar stars that drift down, revealing they are only soft webbed snowflakes falling around Jack Frost; there are still no stars. He breathes in cold and exhales ghosts; with a shiver and a blink, the sky rolls over, wakes up. A flicker of acid green—then a snake writhing across the sky that flares up into towering waves of red, like a forest fire in the heavens. Anna could never sleep on nights like this; she used to come running to find him at the first spark of light, and together they would wake Elsa, determined to replace icicle-sharp memories with fresh snow.

It isn't long before the aurora blurs to blue, a color it shouldn't reach this high in the atmosphere. Shades of aquamarine and cyan crept into the fire, corrupting it to poisonous purple blotting into black. Obsidian walls stretched up to the shrouded sky, and they shouldn't have been visible, but they gleamed with a violet sheen, a glassy façade of iridescence that wove and rippled like a storm-wind.

Grand Pabbie joins him on the mountain peak, but his gaze is directed downward, into the next valley. Jack drops his gaze to the army on the ground.

"The Nightmares are running for Arendelle," he says.

"Oh no," sighs the troll. "They have long taken Arendelle. They're moving outward."

"Right." Jack recalls how the blackout zone in his time has reached out across Norway, bled into the borders of Sweden. Even now, are the Guardians assaulting the black walls, calling for Pitch and his consort to come out of their frozen kingdom of shadows and face the light? Jack can imagine North's sleigh divebombing the great dome, Bunny's boomerangs lashing into solid walls of ink and ice and not even leaving a dent.

The Nightmares and their Fearling riders would lead Jack to Pitch, if he didn't already know where to go. There's nowhere Pitch will be except with Elsa, ruling over a kingdom Jack gave him. Gave them.

"I could blame you," Jack says, shoulders hunched, hands in his pockets, staff cradled against his body. "Everybody, all the time, 'true love thaws a frozen heart.' You started it, you know."

"It is not our fault," says Grand Pabbie.

"No, I know," says Jack. "But I could blame you anyway."


	10. Need the Nightmares

A/N: Chapter 10! Ten whole chapters! This fic is taking over my life. :1 I love this chapter, so I hope you do too! (But it's also kind of weird, so I'll forgive you if you don't. ;D)

10 (Need the Nightmares)

"You should stay here tonight," says the old troll, watching the last dregs of the aurora disappear with some trepidation. "The Nightmares won't be able to find you here."

Jack pulls his hood up over his hair, shadowing his face as he looks out across the valley, where something is moving. "Nah," he says. "I need the nightmares tonight. Maybe I'll get some clue about what's I'm getting myself into."

He bends his knees and jumps and the wind sweeps him down over the silvery slopes. There was a time, shortly after his death, when he had to call the breezes to catch him—but he has only known the Man in the Moon longer than the wind, and they have an understanding now. He only has to throw himself to its mercy and it knows not to let him fall.

Sometimes, when it is too lonely, he talks to it still, and it keens its immortality back to him.

Below him—them, if you count the wind—the valley floor writhes with the humping shapes of Nightmares. They are massive, far bigger than he's ever seen them—at least as big as elephants, and their black-violet grit is frosted with pale blue. He can't see any details, only the glimmer of ice in a pulsing gloom and their burning golden eyes.

There are hundreds of them like an army of corrupted stars, unblinking as the Nightmares gallop through the valley. They trail vicious black tentacles, always seeking, snakes in the night ready to sink their fangs into unsuspecting dreams. Jack can't help the fear that settles into his chest at the sight of the gargantuan shadows. It's always been there, an edge of terror that he cannot dull, even knowing it will make it easier for Pitch to exploit him. But watching the valley move with his hooded eyes wakes the terror from an edge to a blade, and he knows it'll lead the Nightmares right to him.

That's alright—tonight, it's what he wants.

Well, perhaps 'wants' is a strong word, for the clench in his chest, the sick fear in his stomach at the thought of one of those vast beasts noticing him, coming toward him—it's not a clear indication of desire. But it's what he intends as he slants his flight downward towards a cave half buried in the snow. It's set into a mountain far above the distorting backs of the Nightmare herd, but it still feels too close.

Jack doesn't need to sleep, but he and the Sandman have been friends for a good long while now; Jack learned how to dream years ago, how to fall asleep beneath golden stars without his ethereal body's urging.

The stars are beneath him now, racing through a tainted valley, but the principle is the same, he expects. He folds himself against the cold harsh ridges of the cave wall, tugs his hood farther over his blue eyes, wraps his ice-embroidered hoodie more tightly around himself, cradling his staff against him like a child's stuffed toy….

Sleep doesn't come easy, but it comes.

Sandy's streaking gold-dust doesn't reach Arendelle anymore, but there have always been dreams—even if not the ones that truly matter, not the sweet visions that stick with you through the day, so you almost wish you'd never woken up from them. Sandy,s good at those, and if he were here, Jack would be dreaming of Jamie on a late autumn day, an early hard snow, no school after a tough week of homework and tests where Jamie barely had time to play.

In retrospect, Jack is glad he didn't dream that, for he would not have wanted to see it ruined when the Nightmares came sniffing at his door.

Though he can't see them, he can feel them through the summer haze of his lazy, meaningless dream. There are two, and they fill the mouth of the cave like tar that has swallowed trembling tortured stars. One pushes in front of the other, causing a brief tussle, a crackling snort; the other lunges in, eager, hungry, scraping off bits of its hide on its companion as it shrinks to fit into the cave.

The Nightmares are not made of polluted Dreamsand, as they are in the future, where Pitch has been stalking Sandy for years. Instead, the particles that grate against each other as the Nightmares trot across the cave and press their noses to Jack's forehead are each intricate snowflakes in sickly shades of purple and black.

-o-

Jack knows Pitch's bad dreams can be subtle as closed doors, distant lamplight, friends who blink with too many eyes—but it is obvious when the Nightmares catch him. Between one heartbeat and the next, he falls from a dream of riding crystalline moths across a summer night with all its stars and tumbles into a stagnant grey pool. His staff is lost, somewhere—he drops to his knees, making sluggish waves in the viscous, scummy liquid as he scrabbles along the bottom in search of it. His hands meet something long, rigid, slick with algae—but when he grasps it, pulls it free of the clinging water, he finds it is only knobby bone—

In the background stands a tall figure in a black robe. His sickle drips seawater. In his other hand, he holds the ragged tail of a pallid mermaid, her tangled red hair spread like sick seaweed on the surface of the pool.

Jack drops the bones and scrambles backward, but he slips on the slimy ground, hits his elbows, the back of his head, keeps falling—

He is spread-eagled in the darkness, manacles clamped around his wrists and ankles like teeth. His sweatshirt is gone, his skin bare to a chill even he can feel. Shades creep in around him, rustling outlines, indistinct tatters of fear. He can see the sickly surface of the grey water far above him, like the face of the moon eaten by putrefying disease, like a mirror rippling with oil and the rotting face it shows is his.

The scratchy hiss and flare of a match lighting tears back the shadow. Jack doesn't mean to fight his bonds—he came here on purpose, to see what he was facing—but it's not in his nature to be still. It's not in his nature to be trapped.

It's not in his nature to lie quiet with Elsa in danger before him.

She stands pale beside him, her lips sewn shut with tarlike threads, a lit black candle in her grasp. Inky wax runs over her white fingers, hardening into swollen onyx icicles that hang from her hands. She is draped in veils of indigo and violet and black, and she is smiling through her scar-encrusted gag.

"Elsa!" Jack croaks. He twists on the slab of cold that holds him, kicking—he feels something in his knee pop—the chains sink into his wrists and slice, and his blood is the same dirty water as the ceiling. A noise of mingled pain and frustration claws its way out of him and he can't deny there's fear, he can't even hide it—

Elsa leans over him, veils slithering over his arms, his chest, across his throat. One hand settles on his grimace to quiet hi; the other sets the candle on the flesh over his sternum.

The wicks burns blue; the wax runs across his chest and down into his heart, his lungs, writing black branches into his veins; Jack shouts incoherently—

—and sits outside of himself, knees to his chest, hood pulled up over his hair, watching a poisoned version of the girl he loves while she watches the cold flame burn into a dream version of himself. Pitch steps free of the shadow, tossing something away from him—Jack glimpses the fraying edge of a mermaid's finned tail—Pitch wipes his hand on the front of his robe, and Jack knows this is Pitch himself, not merely a nightmare-driven hallucination. Pitch is here, in his head, and Jack's impotence makes him wild. Frost ferns explode out from the space where he sits, a white-webbed mandala radiating across the darkness. Pitch drops him an amused smile, knowing exactly what he's doing to Jack, knowing exactly what Jack's afraid of. Just like he always did—always will.

"You'll not have her back from me, you know," Pitch says. Lazily. Triumphantly. Like he's bought her from herself and he, the Nightmare King, has nothing to fear from his possessions. Once he's paid for them, they will not rebel.

Jack thinks of a hundred retorts at once; they spiral out of him into the mandala, sending it spinning wider into the unnatural night. Instead of speaking any of them aloud, Jack puts his head down on his knees and says, "I don't think that's what I'm coming for."

-o-

The nightmare dissolves in a slow mist that fills the spectral space, and Jack awakens with so much fury that he jolts his head against the stone wall upon flinging himself from sleep. The movement is painfully reminiscent of hitting his head on the algae-slick floor of the grey dreaming pool. "Useless," he growls, his staff sliding out of his grip and rolling across the floor.

"Useless!" His fist slams into the stone, accompanying the second shout with a flaring pain. He suffered the Nightmares' kiss for nothing, he learned nothing, he _gained nothing_—

Except he saw Elsa's face again. And, staring into the shadows that cling to the cave ceiling almost as thickly as they cling to the sky outside, he realizes he would have given up everything, sold himself piece by piece, for only that.

-o-

Jack caught Pitch in the castle shadows in the weeks following Elsa's disastrous coronation and triumphant return. Nights make him restless, moonless nights especially so—but summer nights of the new moon are the worst, the oppressive heat making him feel useless and restive. He always whispered chill winds down the castle corridors as he wandered them, passing Elsa's door, Anna's door, the doors to empty rooms, the doors to only gloom and ghosts. This place needed more people—more children.

The door to the former king and queen's bedroom never opened, keeping its dusty regret hidden behind painted wood. Jack walked past it, like he did every night, pacing the corridors, keeping himself away from cold beds and sleeping royalty. He kept asking himself why he wanted to stay. He kept coming up empty.

He kept not leaving.

Worse, he kept not doing his job, not creeping in to wake Elsa—or even Anna—in the quiet hours of the dark, to haul them giggling through hiemal wonderlands they built together. He was supposed to be their Guardian, rewriting their sequestered childhoods into arctic revels. In the daylight, it was easy, but at night he was afraid.

The second time he walked past that perpetually silent door, he saw the shadows waver beneath it.

Jack stopped, hesitated. And then, staff held out in front of him, he reached forward and pressed his hand against the wood. It creaked, exhaled dust, and swung inward, unlatched already, and Jack already knew who he was going to find.

Pitch loomed just inside, undoubtedly hoping for a jump from whomever opened the door on his hideaway. Jack just leaned forward on his staff, meeting the tall shadow's aurous eyes with nonchalant defiance. Pitch lifted a brow, and the Fearlings crept out from beneath the hem of his robe, swarming over each other like a pit of black snakes on the dusty bedroom floor.

"You can see me," said Pitch, and he looked pleased at the knowledge. "Who are you?"

His eyes fell on the lightning-sphere of crackling ice gathering about Jack's free fist, the frost flowers uncurling across the grooved surface of his staff. "Ah," said the Nightmare King, "you're Jack Frost, aren't you? I've heard of you. You're not one of those sniveling, _saccharine_ Guardians, are you?"

The defiant _yes_ was on Jack's lips before he could think about it, but he bit it back. It's easier to fight someone if you're invisible—and the Pitch of this century didn't know about the war of belief where Jack refused to be his prince. He hadn't yet seen his Nightmares explode into white ice and revenge, hadn't watched Jack rally the children against him or stand with the Guardians in their moments of weakness. Today, two hundred years ago, Jack was a nonentity to Pitch Black, and despite the fury that inspired, he let the ice in his grasp dissolve into a gasp of cold air. Pitch was good at sneak attacks and subtlety; maybe Jack could try the same. Maybe Pitch would lower his guard.

"No," Jack said, with as much scorn as he could muster. "What do I need with _those_ stuffed shirts? They're all grown-ups."

"Mm. Yes." Pitch swept around, the Fearlings writhing in his wake like a mourning train. "So I can count on you not to interfere?"

"Depends," said Jack, curling his arm around his staff and watching the shadows that painted the walls in this room, stretching out curling tentacles, fluttering hints of wings. The portraits on the walls watched him with hooded eyes that blinked looked away and sometimes smiled sinister smiles with teeth that had never been painted in.

"But Jack," said Pitch, sitting down on the once-majestic four-poster bed, whose curtains hung limp with neglect and whose quilts were coated with a layer of grime that Pitch's touch did not disturb. "Everyone here is a _grown-up_."

Jack's fist clenched more tightly, but he forced himself to uncurl his fingers and lean casually against the doorframe. "You should really just go," he said. "I don't know why you're here—"

"I expect you do," Pitch said lazily.

"Elsa's _not_ afraid anymore. And no one else is afraid of her, either!"

"Ah, Jack," said Pitch expansively, lying back on the bed, his arms thrown wide, an expression of sick pleasure spreading across his pallid face, "wouldn't that be _so _nice if it were true?" Jack could just see the gloom in the corners of the canopy twisting into sharp terrible shapes above Pitch's spread-eagled form. "For you, I mean. For me, well. I like it better this way."

Frost collected on the doorframe where Jack touched it, spreading upward in elaborate lace edges. "You won't get her," he said, and he couldn't stop the snarl in his words. Pitch sat up again, rising to approach the doorway. He leaned over the silver-haired spirit, faces almost touching, and smiled with all of his teeth.

"Jack," he said softly, his voice almost sympathetic, poisoned honey on a razor blade, "what _adult_ fears you have. Worrying you'll fall in love with her. How tragic. Well." He straightened, shrugging with his hands thrown wide. "You know what they say. 'True love thaws a frozen heart.' I hope you don't miss your ice powers _too_ much."

Jack whipped his staff around, lashing out, but Pitch had already dissolved, he and his Fearlings coming back together in the far dark corners of the room. Only his burning eyes remained visible, and the veiled shifting of the Fearlings at his feet.

"You know, if you simply… _let_ me have her, you wouldn't have to worry about all that inconvenient drivel. Stay neutral. Let winter run its course, and there will be no thaw."

The room was empty again, silent again. Jack started to back out, and Pitch's voice sounded once more, right beside him:

"Besides, I do believe she would be happy with me. We're both monsters, after all."

Jack whirled around, staff bursting with assailing icicles, but there was no one there to fight.


	11. Imagine Going Home

A/N: I sure hope you guys like reading fluff a lot more than I like writing it. :p Soon though, it will just be TRAGEDY AND DRAMA _all the way to the end _ (mwahaha ahhh so happy)

11 (Imagine Going Home)

When the tattered echoes of Pitch's tantalizing voice faded out of the corridor, Jack was already racing down the hall. He didn't even knock; a blast of frigid wind slammed Elsa's door open and Jack leapt to the edge of her bed, crouching on the cobalt comforter that Elsa had thrown off in her sleep. She let out a hastily-stifled shriek and a flurry of snow-slivers when the weight on the end of her bed woke her; the tiny noise brought the grin to Jack's face. That and the shadows hid the trembling.

"Jack! It's the middle of the night!"

"You noticed that too? Good. Get Anna."

"Already here!" Anna sang, skipping into the room, hair tousled, still in her nightgown. "I always know when Elsa's awake!"

"That's… a little creepy."

"Not really. I actually just notice when my sister starts screaming in the middle of the night." She yawned widely. "So what's all the commotion?"

"We're going to have some fun," said Jack, and flipped himself off the bed. He landed in a circle of ice that rose into an uneven staircase, then dropped into a slide. Jack went barreling down it, laughing; Anna immediately went scrambling after him, following the path of the slide as it grew out the hallway, down past the silent rows of closed doors, heading for the stairs. When Jack looked back, just outside the door, Elsa was hesitating, sheet still pulled up over her chest. He caught her eye as he careened out the door, and he saw her break into a smile and throw off the sheets just before he lost sight of her.

Winter spirit and royal daughters went rocketing down the stairs at full speed, all shouting with laughter loud enough to wake the whole battalion of castle servants. "Jack, the front doors are closed!" Elsa gasped through her giggles, nightgown riding up to her knees, hair a wild tangle of unladylike bangs and waves.

"We're going to _die_!" Anna wailed, grinning as she lay backward on the ice, then immediately fighting her way upright again. "Ouch, that's cold. Way colder than I'd like. Actually, my feet are pretty c—" She shrieked as they hurtled toward the doors; Jack raised his staff to gust the portal open, but Elsa got there first; she rose to her bare feet, knees bent, balanced like a surfer in a tsunami. Brow furrowed, a triumphant smile spread across her face, she raised her hands and the doors crashed open in a blizzard-burst of winter. Jack twisted around, grinning, and nearly flew off the slide he was building as he ran it; the three of them skidded out into the courtyard and went spiraling across the ice rink that had been there since the day Elsa returned home. Anna scrambled upright, hopping around on alternating feet.

"AH—cold—ooh—oof—cold—should've put on—cold!—shoes—! And maybe—ahhh—a coat—"

Laughing, Elsa spun around, sliding backwards across the ice with her arms stretched toward Anna; a pair of shimmering silver slippers and a cape with a mantle of icicled fur swirled around her younger sister. "Elsa!" Anna wailed. "I don't think you understand that your _clothes made of ice_ are _still cold_!"

The two of them almost seemed to have forgotten Jack, but for once he didn't mind. He was building ramps and obstacles around the rink while Elsa rewrote the fountain's spray into new geometrics of branching spikes, and he was trying not to revel in the laughter he had coaxed out of the queen. It was easy to make Anna smile, but fighting for Elsa's joy always reminded him of the unparalleled freedom in her when she sang her crystal palace to life.

And he found that, watching her from the edges of her glittering ice rink, Jack didn't fear Pitch's threats at all. In fact, the courtyard was so bright, he almost forgot there was no moon.

-o-

In the morning, the fear came creeping into his veins, when he awoke curled up in Elsa's gigantic bed. Elsa and Anna sprawled next to him, a tangle of limbs and lace hems and long hair. He remembered tramping back inside as the sun trickled over the horizon, the three of them breathless, Anna shivering so hard he thought she was going to break her teeth. They all collapsed together, one gasping puddle of spent laughter; and Jack, spread-eagled, couldn't imagine leaving anymore, slipped off to sleep beside the two girls almost before he remembered that he didn't need to sleep—wasn't supposed to dream, in case the Sandman found out he was here.

Now, in the early afternoon light, he opened his eyes and realized he only had to move his hand a few inches and he could brush Elsa's hair away from her face. The summer sun and the lingering dreams wiped the burdens of queenship from her eyes, and it was almost as liberating as watching her let go of a childhood of suppressed fears. She was waking up to herself, and he could see it in the way she slept—

Anna gave a particularly jarring snore, and Jack rolled off the bed, somersaulting backwards to land beside his staff on the floor. Elsa flung herself awake, suddenly panicking about the queenly things she was supposed to be doing this minute; the commotion woke Anna, who nearly fell off the bed. They both calmed down long enough to find Jack sitting cross-legged on the floor, head tilted to the side, looking up at them.

"Jack!" yelped Anna, swooning backwards, trying and failing to hide a smile. "We thought you were a gentleman!"

"You weren't paying much attention then, were you?" He raised his eyebrows, curling his hand around his staff and planting it on the floor.

"Elsa! Throw him in the dungeon! You must protect our royal virtue!" Anna threw herself across her sister as if to shield her from Jack; Elsa giggled reluctantly, then said, "Anna, get up. I have to get to work."

"Yeah, yeah, you're the queen, I know," said Anna grumpily, untangling herself from her sister and swinging herself off the bed. She stomped for the exit, muttering, "No time for us lowly peasants—come on, Jack, the Queen of Arendelle needs to take three hours to get dressed again—"

"I think it's time for me to go home," he said, and leaned his head against his staff, pulling his hood over his eyes so he didn't have to see their faces.

-o-

Jack held the clockwork snow-globe in one hand, twisted back to its normal size. Elsa and Anna were fully clothed and coiffed, looking like royalty once again, and not unruly children who had slept through hours of daylight and duty. They were dressed for summer in low-cut dresses that trailed across the grassy slope, but it was snowing heavily over Elsa; Anna kept giving exaggerated shivers and moving farther away from her sister. Behind them stood Olaf and Kristoff; Olaf appeared to be having a conversation that Kristoff was paying absolutely no attention to. Jack grinned at Kristoff, with whom he'd become friends almost as quickly as he had with Anna, by virtue of Kristoff's appreciation for Jack's icy aesthetic. Kristoff rolled his eyes while Olaf waved his tiny arms animatedly.

"Elsa, could you please stop—" Anna finally started loudly, but Jack cut her off.

"No, Elsa. Let it snow," he said, and smirked.

Nonetheless, he was disappointed to see the flurry of alabaster abate, until only a few plumes of snow drifted into her hair. "Sorry," she mumbled, trying not to look at Jack.

Well, he could change that.

"It's been fun," he said grandly, throwing his arms wide and flourishing his staff. Unnoticed by anyone, Olaf began to drift apart, still talking energetically. White powder like chalk dust sloughed off his back while Jack enthusiastically shook the clockwork snow-globe; it spread out and downward, reforming into a delicate veil of snow like a cape that started beneath his twiggy arms. A glimmering pattern of frost formed down and around his bulging torso, and bits of his head broke apart and spiked upward, twining into a sallow braid that wafted gently in a cold breeze. The image in the snow-globe was stuttering, flickering between Arendelle and the North Pole—Jack assumed it was because he was focusing on Olaf and shook harder, grinning widely even as his brow furrowed in concentration.

Kristoff finally looked down at Olaf as the braid settled over the snowman's shoulder and the summer sun sparkled off Olaf's new dress. "El—Olaf!" Kristoff said loudly, startled; Elsa and Anna whipped around to see Elsa's pudgy new twin; Anna doubled over laughing and Elsa pivoted back to face Jack just when the architecture inside the clockwork sphere finally settled into a rendition of the lights and domes of the North Pole—albeit a fuzzy one. Jack bowed extravagantly to Elsa and flung the globe up into the air where it shimmered and trailed light as it fell.

"See you around, snow queen," he said, and launched himself upward, flipping around to dive into the streaking portal.

"Jack," she started to say, and just before he touched the deliquescent colors, the plummeting snow-globe rebuilt itself into Arendelle's castle. Jack tumbled through the portal and hit the ground in a spray of mud and grass stains about three feet from where he started. Anna laughed harder; he thought she might stop breathing soon. Olaf was ignoring the whole process, spinning around and singing loudly and off-key as he enjoyed his new dress. Kristoff had his arms folded and was grinning. Even Elsa was smiling again.

"That didn't really go as planned," Jack said, rolling himself to his feet and jiggling the snow-globe again. The image inside it wavered and fragmented, until it was nothing but falling gears and glass. "Dang it."

"Are you alright?" Elsa asked, lifting her skirts and moving toward him. Jack smiled and shook the snow-globe at her.

"Faulty technology," he said. "Or magic. Or both. North was probably experimenting with it when I, uh. Borrowed it. It's not finished." He twisted it smaller again—the mechanism stuck, clunked, and finally complied—and tucked it back in its pocket as it flashed a series of North Pole/Arendelle/Burgess/Burgess/Arendelle images at him. "Which I didn't think through very well."

"So you can't go home?"

"Doesn't look like it." He shrugged his staff onto his shoulder. "Not right now, anyway."

Her expression seemed to be warring with itself, somewhere between relief and trepidation and regret on his behalf. She finally settled on something carefully neutral and said, "Doesn't that… worry you?"

"Nah," he said, watching Olaf start making up his own lyrics to Elsa's song. _"Let it snow, let it snow, don't really know these words—let it snow, let it snow, as long as it's cold my nose won't feed the birds—_do birds eat carrots? Or noses?_" _Jack tucked his hands into his pockets, expression wry. It was unquestionably, undoubtedly, ninety-five percent a fault in the unfinished snow-globe that was keeping him here and now, instead of two hundred years further and farther north.

But maybe, just a little, it was the fact that he couldn't stop thinking about her, and the snow-globe wouldn't take him anywhere else.

"Hey," he said, looking back at Elsa and flashing a grin that startled her into a blush and a smile. "I guess if you've got to get all this work done, you'd better show me some responsibility."

"Well, I—it's very boring—"

"Oh, I don't doubt it," he said, marching back toward the castle. "Let's see what we can do about that."

"I really do have to do it, I _am_ the queen," she said firmly, following him, leaving Anna—who was still laughing uncontrollably—Olaf—who had stolen Kristoff's hat for unknown purposes—and Kristoff—who was chasing him—on the grassy knoll behind them.

"Yeah, yeah, don't I know it."

And what he didn't say, as he fidgeted with the snow-globe in his pocket and left frosty footprints melting behind him in the grass, was what he'd realized in the last few seconds before he traveled: If he went home, Elsa would be dead. So long dead the world would have forgotten her.

And he couldn't imagine living in that world at all.


	12. A Jagged Crown to Bear

A/N: There are two very important things you need to know for this very long chapter:

1) In the French version of "Let It Go," the line isn't "the cold never bothered me anyway"—it's "le froid est pour moi le prix de la liberté," which pretty well translates to "for me, cold is the price of freedom," something I find _so much more tragic _and which was absolutely one of the inspirations for this whole story.

2) The word "summit" didn't actually come into common use in this situation until the 1950s, but it suited my need, so I commandeered it. History majors may berate me. Others, away with you. :p

12 (A Jagged Crown to Bear)

A battalion of Nightmares waits for him outside the cave, blanketing the downward slope like a black dress over pale flesh. They don't touch him as he walks through them; they don't need to. They're strong enough by now that even as the fuliginous sea parts for him to pass, they are whispering the bad dreams into his head—and Jack is wide awake.

They are all the same, the dreams: Elsa dead, Elsa dead, Elsa dead. "I stayed so I wouldn't have to see that," he tells the Nightmares irritably, but the images only come faster: Elsa frozen, pale and unmarked, like a fairytale princess awaiting her kiss; Elsa sprawled on the ice, blood blossoming across her chest (Hans standing over her, gloating, Anna not in time, _Jack_ not in time); Elsa, captured in a trade war, tortured, finally succumbing; Elsa challenged by a pretender to the throne and losing; Elsa assassinated; Elsa hanged for treason; Elsa burned as a witch—

Elsa, drowning, her crystalline dress billowing around her in the black water, the ice closing over her face, nothing but the faintest dregs of moonlight falling through the surface—

Jack jolts awake at that one, finding himself swaying on his feet, his forward momentum slowed. He scowls, rubbing a hand across his face, leaving a coruscant half-mask behind, then reaches into his pocket and pulls out a little golden pouch. Pausing in a mountainside snowbank, he leans his staff into the crook of his elbow and empties the pouch into his open palm. It shimmers and flickers and wriggles over itself, vibrating slightly, like it has too much energy. It's just a pinch, and Jack thinks he should probably save it—but there's something waiting for him at the bottom of this mountain, and he expects he'll need all the help he can get.

Sandy expected as much, too. He gave Jack the pouch right before North sent Jack back, and now Jack tosses it into the air. It intertwines itself in lambent vines with the veils of snow falling around Jack, and the good dreams come back, pressing themselves into his thoughts like enthusiastic dogs demanding attention, trampling over the Nightmares' bequests.

Jack starts moving again, dreamily, but awake. The Dreamsand brings in other images, better images: the months spent with Elsa, watching her really become a queen—helping her really become a queen. Sitting constantly in the stark room she used as an office, redecorating it in swirls of silver and lace, just keeping her company. Jack almost learned to sit still in those months, but it always made him want to burn down the dull, severe room, just for the satisfaction of seeing it obliterated with a totality ice could not accomplish.

"Jack, go play with Anna."

"Anna's not lonely," Jack said lazily, leaning his chair back on two legs. He propped his feet on the table, rested his staff on his knees, and watched frost stream out of it to burst and swirl across the ceiling.

"I'm not lonely either. I'm working."

"You're always lonely."

She gave an exasperated sigh. "Jack—"

"No, really." The legs of his chair hit the floor with a thump; he sets hi staff across his knees and leaned his elbows across it. "D'you think I don't know what it looks like? I can see it. Right there behind your eyes."

"Maybe you should stop looking into my eyes," she muttered, casting them back down to her piles of documents.

"Yeah, or not." He pushed his chair back again and started drawing pictures in the veneer he had given to the ceiling. "Do you even remember the last time you weren't alone?"

"The same time Anna—"

"Nope," he said. The silhouettes on the ceiling became history, curving profiles of child-Anna and the former king and queen of Arendelle. "While you were locked up in your room, Anna had your parents. And when they were gone, and she was still confined to the castle, I'm one hundred percent sure she sneaked out. Repeatedly." Frost-Anna crept around a corner, rappelled out a window on bed-sheets, and fled to the town. "Okay, maybe not a lot. But when she could. And you—"

An intricate figure of Elsa curled around herself in the icy glaze. "You were her." He picked his words deliberately, watching her from the corner of his eyes. She had dropped her papers and had her gaze trained on the ceiling. "You were the good girl you always had to be." She gasped a little, and he winced, but he went on.

"So no one saw you, right? No one listened."

The ice pictures all exploded into one opaline sunburst. Elsa flinched. "Then there's me." Jack pointed with one hand, the other still behind his head, like he was stargazing. Indeed, the constellation Jack Frost emerged from the jagged edges of the pale shattered history. A full, brilliant moon bloomed out of the ice around him.

"And for three hundred years," he said, "no one saw me. _No one_—" His fist clenched, and the moon cracked. "—listened."

He thumped his chair back to all four legs once again, to find Elsa looking at him, sadly, with nothing to say. "So trust me, Elsa. You don't have to hide it. Anna has Kristoff and the servants and the townspeople, right? And you're lonely." He leaned forward, pressing his hands flat on the top of her desk; frost flowers spread outward from his fingertips.

"I'm not gonna let you stay lonely."

Elsa folded her hands in her lap; he could see them under the table, clasped together as if she wished she were wearing gloves. "Okay," she said finally, quietly. "You're right. It's lonely. It's always been lonely."

Looking satisfied, Jack laced his hands back behind his head and crossed his legs. "Also, I can't go play with Anna because she's also coming to the—diplomatic—meeting—thing. What d'you call them?"

"Oh—I don't know—diplomatic meetings, I guess? Oh no, what if there's an official word for it—I'll have to consult my advisors—"

"Elsa—" He smirked. "—_chill_."

"No, Jack, this is something I should know! If I don't, I'll look foolish and naïve and weak in front of the other heads of state—"

"Hey, hey, hey. Elsa!" He pulled his legs up under himself and perched on the edge of the chair. "It's just a word. Probably kind of a dumb one." Smiling, he climbed off the chair and reached a hand out across the table. Elsa hesitated, then unknotted her hands from each other and pressed her fingers to Jack's. Lacy leaves and feathered flowers roiled out from the place where their skin touched, giving each one a filigree glove from fingertip to wrist.

"It's okay," he said. She exhaled, and he added, "Besides, I'm coming to your diplomatic meeting, too."

"What!" She jumped back in a flurry of snowflakes, nearly knocking over her chair. Jack grinned and slung his staff across his shoulders.

"Yep. Not like any of them will be able to see me."

"You can't—"

"Is that an order from the queen?"

"I—yes!"

"Because you're not the queen of me. Immortal winter spirits are exempt from your _rules_." He wiggled his fingers disdainfully to punctuate, laughing.

"Jack, you're going to be _really distracting_."

"Yeah, that's kind of what I do." He held up one hand to forestall her further objections. "Elsa. I'm not going to leave you alone in there." His smiled turned serious, his eyes shadowed. "I'm not ever going to leave you alone."

"That's kind of creepy. I'm pret-ty sure that's creepy." Anna stuck her head through the door, eyeing Jack suspiciously. Her braids were twisted up on top of her head, wound through with a green ribbon. "Elsa. Don't let him be creepy." She shuffled the rest of the way into the room, moving stiffly in skirts that rustled with each step. "Ugh. I hate formal wear. Anyway, he's totally right. He should definitely come."

"What? Why?"

Anna draped herself over a chair, throwing her arm across her face. "We've got to be the most socially awkward kingdom _ever_," she sighed. "Our parents never even let us go outside." Strands of hair started to escape one of her braids as she dragged her arm mournfully across it. "_Every time _we have one of these summit things—"

"Summit!" Elsa repeated, seizing on the word.

"Yeah, isn't that what they're called? Anyway, every time, you get all—" Anna wiggled her fingers at the ceiling, apparently attempting to describe Elsa's feeling on the matter of social and diplomatic interaction. "—panicky. You'd think it would get easier? I dunno, maybe not? But _Jack_—" She dropped an arm to point at him without looking. "Point A: He calms you down. Point B: He can make _anyone_ laugh. Well he makes me laugh. And he makes you laugh. Which is a lot more impressive."

Elsa stared at her as her ramble spun itself out. "Good point," the queen finally said.

"Yeah, I'm one smart cookie." Anna swung her feet to the floor. "You're not wearing your formal gown yet? Elsa! The summit's in half an hour!"

Elsa stood up, moving out from behind the table she used as a desk. "Yes, and I need to get ready, so get out."

"_Half an hour!_" Anna repeated. "You'll never make it! War will start over your lateness! The kingdom will fall over the lack of a dress!" She pretended to swoon, fell out of her chair, and climbed to her feet. "Oof. Do you need help?"

"No, I'll be fine." Elsa made shooing motions, waving her fingers through little clouds of snow.

"Aren't you going to chase Jack out, too?" Anna demanded, hiking up her skirts and sauntering for the door.

"No."

"Elsa! You—"

"I need to talk to him about the summit, if he's coming." Elsa pushed her resisting sister out the door and closed it on Anna's protest, slumping back against the wood. "Whew."

"So what do I need to know about this diplomatic meeting I'm going to?" Jack asked, sitting on the edge of her desk.

"Nothing. Just an excuse."

Jack raised an eyebrow. "You're not really going to change in front of me?"

"Well."

She lifted her arms; a shimmer ran across the fabric of the more comfortable dress she'd been wearing to read. Ice crackled at her hems, leaving lace of filigree frost across her low summer neckline, racing up her skirt in ripples and snowy froth. The skirt filled out with thick layers of ice, colors bleeding into cyan and ultramarine. A light, fluttery layer settled over the whole skirt, with intricate patterns of snowflakes cut into the fractal fabric. A ribbon of snow belted the dress beneath her breasts, shifting slightly with the movement of her breath and an unseen wind. Jack couldn't believe the craftsmanship; she'd absorbed all the influences of his favorite frost ferns, drawing them into ice that moved like fabric; he wanted to examine every detail, to find the flaws in the scintillant crystal dress. He'd thought her powers had weakened since she returned to Arendelle, but the intricacy of her new ensemble seemed to indicate otherwise.

Elsa held up a hand, draped with chiming cascades of glacier-blue bracelets; in her palm, a swirl of wind formed itself into a jagged crown. Its peaked outline rose in snowflake points, branching and connecting in perfect symmetry; within the frame, frost filled the gaps in elaborate wings and thorns, twisting across each other as if the solid air were her window pain.

"Wow," said Jack.

"This is faster," said Elsa with some satisfaction, directing the crown to settle onto her braided and coiled hair. "And my choices are not limited by the current fashion." She took a step and the skirt cracked, ice lighting striking down the snowflake-cut veil. She winced. "It's not as… sturdy as the last one, though."

"Plus, limited color palette," said Jack, still staring and not trying to hide it—but the edge of a smirk touched his lips.

"Well I'm certainly not going to get any green out of it," she said. "And heavens forbid I want any red. Unless I bleed on it." She examined the crack in her skirt; it knitted itself back together, but as soon as she started walking, a handful more ran up from her layered hem.

"Oh well. It looks like I meant to do it."

Jack leaned forward onto his staff, smiling slightly as he just… looked at her. "Anna says it's still cold.

Elsa hesitated. "The cold—"

"I know, I know. Doesn't bother you."

"No. I mean, no, it doesn't, but—when I was up on the mountain, making that other dress…" She turned and walked back to the window, her dress rustling and crunching with the sound of footsteps in new-fallen snow.

"Cold doesn't bother me. But I can still feel it." Her breath fogged the sunlit glass; Jack hopped off the desk to stand next to her, drawing downy snowflakes on the pane beside her breath. "And I realized—the cold is the price of my freedom. I will bear it if it means I am free." She turned to face him, spreading her arms wide, showing off the ice in which she had clothed herself. "This reminds me. Be cold. Be free."

Jack grimaced. "That's definitely not freedom."

"No." She leaned her forehead against the window, gazing out at the sun dappling the grass, the children playing behind the boulders. It's—a different cold, a different freedom. Jack, I have to go in there wearing a smile. Pretending I'm not terrified. Pretending I can defend our kingdom. Pretending I know _everything_, and I can't be clueless or tired or weak. Conceal it, don't feel it," she whispered, almost inaudibly, but Jack knew the shape of the words; he had seen her muttering them to herself before, when she thought no one was looking, when she thought no one was listening—and that was nearly all the time. Elsa was never quite convinced that people could see her now. "If I stay cold, I can keep my kingdom free." She tilted her head to look sideways up at him. "I can keep Arendelle's children safe."

Before he could stop himself, he reached out and grabbed her shoulder, his hand another frosted motif against her skin. "Elsa—"

"It's not right," she said loudly, talking over his protests. "I know you don't approve. But it's…" She shrugged helplessly; he could feel the tendons move beneath his hand, like mermaids sliding underneath the icy surface of her skin. "It's politics. My parents were right all along."

His fist hit the window, smearing his doodles. "They were _not_ right."

"Not for raising a daughter. But maybe for raising a queen."

She looked at him and smiled, and shone all the brighte for the sadness he could still see behind her eyes. "And besides," she added, "_this_ dress is way more impressive than a real one."

"Yeah," Jack said inadequately, summoning up a grin. "Let's go show those weasels why they shouldn't mess with you."

"Just don't start a war, Jack."

"I dunno, Elsa, that sounds pretty fun."

-o-

Jack split off from Elsa and Anna as they entered the throne room; he wanted to be at the back, to be able to watch Elsa's face as he worked his mischief. Queen and princess proceeded up the carpet while visiting dignitaries bowed; when Arendelle's royal daughters turned to seat themselves upon their thrones, the Duke of Weselton's badly-applied toupee was standing on end, frozen into six long spikes that made him look like an iced porcupine. Elsa looked shocked, her hand flying to cover her mouth—while Anna snorted in uncontrolled laughter, realized she probably shouldn't be laughing at someone they were trying to convince to be nice to them, and adopted an expression of wide-eyed alarm. One by one, as the dignitaries noticed, they broke into fearful whispers. Two of the Southern Isles brothers—Jack guessed somewhere between numbers three and seven; they looked much, much older than their imprisoned youngest brother, but not important enough to be numbers one or two—backed up, muttering and pointing.

Elsa's eyes found Jack's across the room, where he was leaning against his staff, legs crossed, one hand in his pocket. With one finger of the other, he drew a smile on his face, pulling up the corner of his lips. She hesitated, then lowered her hand so the whole room could see her smile. When they realized she didn't look angry, or afraid, the quality of the murmuring took on a different tone—more confused than scared.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Elsa began. Jack could see how tense she was, and he skated across the room, drawing a ribbon of ice that wove casually around the well-dressed VIPs. He stopped before Elsa, bowed elaborately—grinning up at her through his bangs—and then moved to stand beside her. Her smile steadied, and she went on,

"I've considered all your proposals very carefully, and I've decided…" She flicked a quick glance at Jack. "That we ought to have some _fun_ first."

She raised her hands—half the room recoiled—but a layer of ice merely glazed the floor, spiraling upward to add ice skates to the feet of the younger nobles in the room. A few mingled shrieks of distress and delight punctuated the crowd, but none were as loud as Jack, punching the air and shouting, "_Yes!"_

"Elsa, this is a great idea!" Anna said enthusiastically, leaping off the dais and skidding across the floor. Elsa waited a moment more, then dashed after her, sliding along the ice despite her advisors behind her protesting—"Queen Elsa, this isn't how a summit meeting is run—!"—"That is really not a good idea, Your Majesty—!"

Elsa grabbed the hands of a young woman and a young man who were both tottering uncertainly on their new skates; she swung them around, calling over her shoulder, "Oh, hush—as long as nobody breaks an ankle, it'll be fine! Then we can all have hot cocoa and discuss business in comfort."

Jack laughed and launched himself toward the ceiling, where he could watch the uncertainty and alarm in the gathered dignitaries turning itself into surprised delight as they all remembered their childhood winters. They wouldn't be able to see them, but they saw his handiwork—in etchings on the icy dance floor, in the joy on Elsa's face as she finally relaxed in front of other people, and not just alone on a snowy mountainside.


	13. Here I Stand

A/N: Ahhh I like this chapter. Very fitting that it's number thirteen as well.

13 (Here I Stand)

The months crept into autumn, and Jack breathed easier to feel the chill coming back to the air. He started leaving little glassy patterns on the grass in the mornings much earlier than the season warranted, but that was a price of being friends with Jack Frost. The heavy summer heat had long driven him to a restless frenzy; he normally lived nowhere and everywhere, moving on when the seasons cycled into spring and his domain shifted across the world.

"Where's Anna?" Elsa asked him, catching him bending over a pattern of fallen leaves he was sewing together with needles of frost. Jack jumped, crackling the leaves between his fingers.

"Hey. Hey! I thought you were working."

"I saw you from the window."

He grinned, having known he was kneeling right in the center of her view. He'd tried to look as lonely and desolate as possible, instead of gathering a cabal of children from the town to join him in the decorating of the leaves. He'd also been doing this every day since autumn exhaled red over all the leaves, hoping to coax her outside, to no avail.

She saw his smile and rolled her eyes. "I've walked into a trap again, haven't I?"

"Oh c'mon, don't be so dramatic." He jumped to his feet. "Now you sound like Anna. Who, by the way, is with Kristoff today. I think helping him deliver ice? I dunno. Doesn't sound like much fun."

Elsa laughed. "You mean they wouldn't let you help."

"Okay, my way would've been _way_ more fun."

Elsa flicked snow at him and took off running, a gust of cold wind lifting the dry leaves in her wake. "Let's go," she called over her shoulder, skidding sideways across a newly-formed patch of ice.

Jack didn't argue.

He leapt up and dove toward her; she gave a small shriek of laughter and Jack felt a flare of pride swell in his chest for having caused It, for having made it so she could laugh—if not without reserve, at least without fear. She flung her hands up into the air, as if to ward him off with her snowflake-swirls; he ducked, looped his free arm around her waist, and swung the two of them high again.

"Wind!" Jack shouted into the whistling current, his face alight, his hair stinging his eyes. "Meet Queen Elsa!" The wind picked up, rustling the grass as the ground fell away. "Elsa, meet my friend the wind!"

"Nice to meet you!" She laughed, the sound carried away as they crossed the fjord. Jack dipped low to the water; Elsa swung her legs down to trail feet and skirt over the surface, flickers of ice sparkling outward in her wake.

"Why haven't we been flying before?" Elsa demanded as they drifted back up into the wind. "I can't believe this is the first time you've taken me flying."

"It's the first time you've stopped doing queen stuff to come have fun with me," Jack said, and it seemed like the whole sky echoed with their laughter.

-o-

Autumn closed over them, shrouds of burning gold draped over the willows, the sky grey with approaching winter, that distant chill running in Jack's veins. Elsa walked beneath the trees; Jack ran, and jumped, bouncing off trees, swinging from branches, looping around and around one particular tree trunk until he tripped over the exposed roots. Elsa didn't laugh at him, but he could see she wanted to; from his spot on the ground, he grinned up at her and said, "C'mon, I can tell it's going to be a good one"—and she chuckled, walking over grass gone crisp beneath her bare feet. Jack scrambled to his feet, skipped in front of her; bowing, he pulled back a curtain of molten willow—

Behind it is Pitch; at the end of the jagged pathway between the Nightmares is Pitch Black; gold and black stutter over each other, the dream/memory faltering in the face of the Nightmare King. Jack doesn't even wait this time; his staff is off his shoulder in half a heartbeat, whipped around, lunging for Pitch. Ice explodes out of it, razor-sharp, a barbed sphere of cold anger careering through the shadowy army. Jack hurtles in its wake; when the massive black scythe swings down, splitting the sphere, Jack flips around, planting his bare feet on the wide blade—and if it isn't the closest thing to death he has felt since drowning, sick and cold and panicked just at the touch of the thing—and pushes off. The scythe's momentum carries it down, biting deep into the mountainside; Jack loops up, until he is above Pitch, and his staff slams down, glacial lightning striking against the night.

"Why Jack, aren't you going to ask me why I'm _here_?" The last word is punctuated by an upward swirl of the scythe, ink and hunger roiling off the blade toward Jack. He tumbles sideways through the air, his lightning gone astray.

"No," he snarls, landing in a crouch, staff swinging along the ground, turning the stone to ice. The nearest Nightmares stamp, skid, and whinny; Pitch loses his footing, but another Nightmare lunges in to catch him. He drapes an arm over its neck, lazily watching Jack leap to his feet; Jack finds himself yanked backwards off his feet, something slick and faintly warm wrapped tightly around his throat. Managing to hang onto his staff, Jack scrabbles at the limb crushing his windpipe, guessing it to be a Fearling arm stretched out to hold him.

"Pitch," he spits through his obstructed air; Pitch straightens up, shrugging elaborately.

"The queen asked me to leave," he says. Jack thrashes, staff jabbing over his shoulder at random, blasting ice into pale flowers on the stone. "She wanted to be alone."

"No one—_wants_—to be alone." Jack kicks forward, slashing fragments of frost in Pitch's direction; a Nightmare steps in front of the frail assault, and the glittering shards bounce off its ink-and-ice hide. "Especially not—Elsa!"

At last, his staff collides with the head—or at least, the head-shaped appendage—of his Fearling captor; it explodes into black and blue shards that rain cuts across Jack's face. He wipes blood out of his eyes and leaps forward; a Nightmare kicks him in the center of his back, and he flies forward, skidding over rough stone.

Pitch crouches over him. "That's where you're wrong, Jack. Well. One of the many places."

Jack shoves himself up onto his hands, blood running into his eyes, reminding him too painfully of that day the chandelier fell on him. The dreams/memories blur into being again, flickering between this reality and the one that passed him by: It is autumn, Elsa lies beside him, the dregs of a blue sky visible through the golden veil of the willow trees. (For a moment, she has Pitch's face; it is smirking, watching him struggle with dream/nightmare/reality.)

Elsa reached one hand toward the strands of leaves. At her touch, tiny silver baubles burst into being on each leaf, like dew drops held immortal by ice. Jack pushed himself up onto his elbows, torn between admiring her handiwork or just her: the frosted ends of her hair, the shallow sea of her eyes. He couldn't fathom why there was something nervous in her smile when she sat up.

"Feel it, don't conceal it, right?" she said.

Before he was halfway through "Yeah, sounds abou—" she had taken a deep breath and leaned forward to kiss him.

"Woah, woah, hey!" Jack scrambled backwards; the heel of one hand collided with his staff, his arm went out from under him, and he landed awkwardly on top of the grooved and crooked wood. He didn't stay there; his feet were under him moments later, and Elsa hurried to stand and face him, looking upset.

"Oh no, did I do it wrong?"

"What? I don't know!" He ran both hands through his hair, backing up so there were a few more feet between them.

"How can you not know! You're three hundred years old! You must have some experience…"

"When you spend most of your time hanging out with _children who can't see you_, there isn't a whole lot of opportunity for kissing!" He turned away, then whirled back. "What were you _doing_? No. Don't answer that. I can't. I just can't."

Her expression was somewhere between bewildered and furious, but she didn't seem to have anything to say. Frost slithered across the grass from her feet, filling the space between them with jagged shapes and flowers made of pale thorns.

"Elsa!" He threw his hands into the air to punctuate, and little spirals of frost spun across the leaves above him. "Aren't you even _listening_! 'An act of true love thaws a frozen heart!' It's like your country's motto, you guys never say anything else!"

"What's your point?" she said stiffly.

He paused, then bent down to snatch up his staff and start pacing circles. "My point is that you should put it on your banners or something! It's all you ever talk about!"

She looked like she still didn't know where this was going—he didn't either—but she said, "Well, it—it saved us."

He pivoted, pointing furiously, rolling his staff back and forth on his shoulder with the other hand. "It didn't save you, Elsa. It put you back in your cage."

She snapped, finally, balling her hands into fists, the trees around her turning instantly to weeping sculptures of gilded ice. "Are you saying I should have _let_ the eternal winter continue?"

"It wasn't eternal!" he shouted. "But it could've been!"

"So you're saying I should do it again?"

"You might consider it! If you even can!" He sank into a crouch, one hand clenched in his hair, the other pressing the end of his staff so far into the dirt it's as if he were hoping to plant it. "Elsa, we can't. I—you already suffered one act of true love—"

"_Suffered?_"

"_You_ admitted your powers are weaker since then—and we can't, _I can't _go through that." Jack dropped his staff and cupped his hands together, calling up a string of memories in three dimensions, tiny white silhouettes of himself and the Guardians, fighting Pitch, chasing Jamie on his sled—and the moon, always the moon, watching Jack use the powers bestowed upon him by that silent judge as compensation for his death. "If I lose my powers, I'm _nothing_." The figures fell away, drifting snow on an autumn wind. "I'm invisible."

He watched the cold ashes settle into the grass, then jumped to his feet again, holding his hands out to Elsa, pleading. "What if that's true love's kiss, right there?"

"And what if it's not?" she demanded. She was standing remarkably still, and he didn't stop to think why, hardly noticed her trembling beneath the impetus to _stay calm stay quiet stay hidden_.

"I can't take that risk," he said, pacing another few circles, because unlike her he _couldn't_ stand still, had been quiet and hidden from the world for too many centuries already. "We just have to—can we just be friends? We're friends, right? It'll still be fun, we'll still do all this stuff, there just won't be any of this true love nonsense hanging around, so otherwise it can just stay the same—"

"Then what's the difference?" she asked heatedly, frost chasing itself up her sleeves in frantic designs.

"Well obviously one way has kissing and the other doesn't!" He flung his hands out and leapt into a tree, balancing down the arc of an iced branch.

"Jack." He didn't look at her, concentrating on moving, but she said, "_Jack Frost_," and he sat down, dangling his legs over the limb and finally meeting her eyes.

"I can still love you without kissing," she said, very carefully, like she was struggling to get the words out, and he looked away again.

"Okay," he said. "But can we just pretend like you don't?"

The air went cold, so cold he gasped and fell out of the tree. He almost didn't dare look at Elsa, but when he rolled himself back to a sitting position, rubbing the back of his head, she looked normal.

"Alright," she said, and her lips quavered into a smile he did not for one second believe. "Friends."


	14. Interlude in Black

14 (Interlude in Black)

And Pitch, still leaning over him when he comes out of the dream/nightmare/reality, says, "Tell me, Jack. If you went back, would you let her kiss you?"

"No," he says, and rolls himself to his feet. Pitch flows backwards, out of the way of Jack's furious punch, spiked with icicles across his knuckles.

"Would you," says Pitch, rising into the air on a stairway of shadow and snow, spreading his arms for the Nightmares to bar Jack's way, "tell her you loved her?"

"No." Jack launches himself into the air, rocketing past the snapping teeth of the Nightmares.

"Would you stop yourself from telling her she should… _conceal, not feel… _for you?"

Jack hesitates, a fraction of a second only but Pitch knows, and smiles, wide and smug; and Jack shouts, "No!" and sends another barrage of broken ice whistling toward Pitch, but the scythe reforms out of the night and he blocks every one. They hover apart from each other, frost and fuliginous ferocity roiling beneath the both of them.

"Are you seriously monologuing at me right now?" Jack demands, aiming his staff directly at the empty space where Pitch should have a heart.

"No, no, this is most definitely a dialogue."

Pitch keeps mutating in Jack's vision, flickering between a twisting shadow spitting indigo and violet and images of Jack and Elsa—good dreams conjured by golden sand and warped by Pitch's intimate knowledge of all Jack's fears. Jack wishes now he hadn't taken the Dreamsand; it warded off the parade of Elsa corpses, but now he can hardly see for the dreams in his eyes.

He shakes his head, blinking and squinting, and lunges for Pitch, who skips to the side as easily as dancing. Jack reverses in midair—and for a moment, on the top of the mountain, he can see her—at the peak between this valley and the trolls', encased in ice like a second skin, holding out a single withering white rose—

Jack plunges forward, only a few feet, hand outstretched—blink and she's gone—just one more dream in a cascade of hallucinations. Jack grits his teeth and focuses on Pitch again. Sandy's gift was supposed to protect him from the Nightmare King's manipulations, but it seems even two hundred years ago, the shadow is stronger than gold.

Rubbing sand out of his eyes, feeling the dreams slough off piece by piece, Jack finds Pitch—one, two, three Nightmare Kings, and back down to one as he violently discards the effects of the Dreamsand—and twirls his staff as he rockets forward. Each revolution conjures a crackling ball of frost, but he doesn't know why he keeps trying; Pitch's scythe slashes through the air again each time, and he sweeps forward in a wave of roiling gloom that rises over Jack like the mountain itself.

"You can't kill me," Jack says, swinging his staff up so a filigree curtain of rime arcs over his head, drifting between himself and the hungry Fearlings at Pitch's feet. "I died once. It didn't stick."

"I'm not going to kill you." Pitch shrugs, and the edges of his shadows form and re-form into nebulous faces, protean creatures with too many teeth and not enough eyes. Sable snowflakes waft between them, sinking as slowly as a drowning boy whose sister screamed overhead.

"_That_ is Elsa's claim."

Something in Jack's chest constricts when Pitch says her name, and he almost can't breathe, can't stand to hear it on that corrupted tongue. His veil of frost spikes, throwing a thousand barbs up into the current of darkness undulating over him. The silhouetted faces distort with silent screams, perforated by white thorns. The scythe begins to reform, readying itself for Jack's assault, but Jack is ready for it; three ivory spears lance from the crook of his staff, piercing the scythe's stygian blade, and he wrenches it sideways, hurling it from Pitch's tendrilar grasp. It spirals into the night below them; the Nightmares scatter before it, then dive to catch it, while Pitch spreads his arms as if in surrender and strolls toward Jack.

"But what I _can_ do," he says, apparently unconcerned by the loss of his weapon—because he has ten thousand weapons waiting behind his words, because his greatest weapon is the way he _knows_ you, the way he can see Jack getting tired though Jack does not slump, only clutches his staff a little bit tighter, breathes just a little bit harder—"and, rest assured, what I _will_ do—"

Jack swipes another flurry of razored snow at Pitch, and the wind wobbles around him. The fragments flutter against his robe and sink uselessly into shadow. Pitch is only a foot away now, only inches; Jack starts to move, attack again no matter how futilely, but a Nightmare reaches out and grabs the back of his hoodie in its teeth, jerking him back, out of reach of its king.

"—is crush _every single person _who still believes in you. Do you know it will be easy, Jack? There aren't very many left." He shakes his head mournfully, making a disbelieving sound. "You haven't been very good to your friends, you know. Just think." He tilts his head back to take in the lack of stars, pondering the absent constellations. "Anna. Kristoff. Which should I widow, and which shall die of grief? Hm." He drops his burning eyes to take in Jack's reaction, the impotent thrashing, the angry determination too great for words, and smiles.

"Have I forgotten anyone?"

"Yeah," says Jack, "E—"

"But I do think," Pitch goes on, stepping lightly through the night air around Jack, as if he is on the verge of skipping, "I _might_ be convinced to forgive them the crime of still believing in _Jack Frost_—"

He whirls suddenly, the hem of his robe flaring out, his teeth grown sharp and his eyes gone to fire as he leans over the captive spirit. "—should only _tell me where the children are_."

Jack stops struggling for a moment, and then he just laughs.

"Not a chance, Pitch," he says, and his staff lashes out.

Pitch raises one hand and catches the blow against his palm. His ashen fingers close around the wood and he rips it away, ascending and retreating. Jack shouts, reaching out; the Nightmare shakes him until he's dizzy, and the dreams overlay his vision again in brief flashes. He slumps, glaring up at Pitch through the strobing memories.

"You can break it," he says, teeth bared. "I dunno what Elsa's told you—"

"Everything," says Pitch. There's triumph there, but it's still superimposed on his disgust, his disappointment. "Everything, of course." He shrugs, the staff held loosely in one hand.

"Then you know that you've done it before." Jack grins, but the expression is feral, not a mien of mischief and glee like he usually wears. "Or will do it, I guess. And it won't stop me."

"I'm not going to break it any more than I'm going to kill you." Pitch's expression sours. "I'm going to take it, Jack Frost." The grin drops off Jack's face in an instant, frost exploding uselessly in the air around him. The Nightmare shakes him again. "I don't make the same mistake twice. Or, in this case, even once." The smile creeps back beneath Pitch's eyes, delight returning at the sight of Jack's shattered certainty.

"You're making a bigger one," the winter spirit snarls, fists clenching into barbed bursts of light. Wind rustles around him, threatening, tossing his hair and promising a storm. "You're going up against _me!_"

"I'm not," says Pitch thoughtfully, turning to cross the shrouded sky, folding his hands behind his back with the staff still held in one, taunting Jack with a final sight of it. "I am, quite clearly, leaving you here." A Nightmare trots up to him, hooves blurring at the edges as stray snowflakes slipped from its outline. It holds Pitch's scythe delicately between its teeth; he takes one hand from Jack's staff to run his fingers through the creature's anfractuous mane, then accepts the weapon with a fond smile.

"And Jack?" says Pitch, without turning back. The Nightmare releases him and backs away, and Jack is so surprised that he hasn't recovered enough to move by the time Pitch is whirling around, a vortex of eternal eclipse, his blade flaying the air on its arc toward Jack.

"In the meantime"—the honed edge of night tears across the space between them; Jack tries to scramble sideways, but he's too late, too slow—"you'll just have to _suffer_ for everything you did to her!"

He watches Jack fall with disdain curling across his pallid face. "They should have burned you for treason," he says to the silent specter as it plummets for the jagged surface of the mountain. His Nightmares rise in a tsunami around him, rustling in his shadow, carrying him higher and higher, until he might touch the black aurora shimmering in the sky. "I know it's usually hanging, but perhaps, just this once, they could make an exception."


	15. Here I'll Stay

A/N: So it turns out that the history of Jack's town… doesn't actually make any sense. Supposedly it was established in 1798 (after the first cabin was built in 1795), but if Jack died 300 years before 2012 (or at least, 300 years before the early twenty-first century), that would mean he lived there in the early 1700s. SO UH I DID SOME SERIOUS HANDWAVERY and for the purposes of this story, there was a settlement at Burgess before it was officially established as a town, Jack died there in the early 1700s, and _Frozen_ takes place in the early 1800s.

Also, I don't know why 'Emma' is such a common fan-name for Jack's sister, but I think it really suits her so it's the one I adopted for this tale. c:

15 (Here I'll Stay)

Jack slams into the ground and straight back into the unfriendly past.

He waited until Elsa fell asleep on that black autumn night, and then he ran from the castle, flipping and diving until he skidded into the grass, already white with frost. Frantically, he twisted his stolen clockwork snow-globe back to full size and shook it with the repressed agony of a blizzard driving his motion. The North Pole glinted inside it, a hundred tiny turning gears. The snow-globe collided with the ground with such force that it rolled away from him, picking up a coating of frost. He didn't allow himself the time to hope, only saw it and jumped—but the light flickered, the image clicked and groaned, and Jack somersaulted back into the grass behind himself, just in time to see his three-second-future self fail and disappear. He didn't hesitate, but picked up his staff and ran for the globe, grabbing it, shaking it, throwing it, dashing through and rolling forward into the future—but only a few seconds, or minutes, or even hours—he couldn't be sure; there was no moon.

Letting out a cry of desperate frustration, Jack jammed the end of his staff against the globe, agitating it into another glimmer of the North Pole that clunked and vanished as he reached for it. Infuriated, Jack kicked the globe, and then launched himself into the air. He didn't want anything more than he wanted to be away from here, away from the tangle of emotions, away from the images of Elsa that kept repeating behind his eyes: her hair in the wind, the half-completed kiss, the mask of a smile across her face and the word _friends_, over and over and over—

Forgetting everything, forgetting responsibility, forgetting that it was the new moon and he never left Elsa alone on the new moon, Jack threw himself toward the stars and soared across the world.

-o-

Burgess was bigger than when he'd left—a lot bigger, although it didn't feel like it to Jack. It had been established as a real town in his absence, and not just a motley of pioneers huddling together for safety and human company. Its fires burned behind windows this time, keeping their warmth away from him even more effectively than his death had the first time—because the last time he was here, he still believed he could touch them, believed that the ice flooding his veins hadn't cut him off from everyone he ever knew: his neighbors, his friends, his mother—

His sister—

Jack walked through the streets, bare feet on cold paving stones, to stand beside the place where he used to live. The window was dark, but he pressed his fingers against it, watching the glass bloom with serrated flowers and boreal thorns. He didn't try to do the math to see how old Emma would be. She was probably dead.

Jack leaned his forehead against the windowpane and found he wanted to cry.

Instead, he pulled up his hood, stuck his hands in his sweatshirt pocket, and turned away. Even if Emma was still alive, he didn't want to see her wrinkled and ancient and catching sight of him only as a product of her senile delusions.

"Jack?"

She stood on a street corner, so hunched over he didn't think she should be allowed outside. Her hair hung thin and lank and grey as washed-out as old socks. Her face was shriveled and spotted and seemed to fold in on itself, but when her heavily-lidded eyes lit on him, her resultant smile made her a hundred years younger. He thought he must be imagining her, believing too hard that his sister could still be waiting for him after all this time.

She collapsed, and he ran to her—he and three other passersby, but she had eyes only for him. "Jack? I've been waiting." Her breath came in exhausted wheezes, each rattling inhalation another icicle through Jack's heart. "Are we going to play now?"

"Yeah," he said, taking her withered hand, although he hated the feel of her wrinkled flesh against his cold fingers. "Yeah, Emma, I'll—"

The inspiration came to him in a flash flood; he could suddenly think of nothing else but Emma, restored to a moment of childhood, frozen in time, a Guardian like him. "I'll introduce you to my friend, the Man in the M—"

He glanced up and realized two things suddenly: He had called the Man in the Moon his friend—and there was no moon tonight.

Jack looked back down and Emma was gone. Of course she was gone—of course she was never there, nor were the passersby who'd rushed to help her, making his vision seem real. She would be well past a hundred if she had lived—and he, Jack, he would be older still; he looked at his hands and tried to imagine them wrinkled, liver-spotted, shaking. Well—he didn't have to imagine that last one: he was trembling already, kneeling in the middle of an empty street with empty hands, blind to the cavernous shadows of an alleyway with burning eyes and mercurial night for a mane.

Something inside of him ignited. It felt like fear, the way it scorched and crackled against the frosted panes of his ribcage. Jack repressed fear to an unhealthy degree, deliberately ignoring it—refusing to succumb to Pitch's domain—until the need overwhelmed him, until whatever he was afraid of was out of control within and without, and he thought his whole world might shatter with the heat. Jack jumped to his feet, grabbing his staff off the paving stones. There was no moon, and he was afraid—and he had nothing now left of his sister but a tattered image of her crumpled on a street corner; a crushed butterfly who believed in him, waited for him, was too old to play when he finally came.

And Pitch—of course it was Pitch, sending him nightmares, laughing at the destruction of Jack's last hopeful memory before his death: his sister, a child forever in his head, laughing, wide-eyed, letting him save her despite the terror that held her paralyzed—despite the cost to himself.

_No, I just mean—an act of true love, it shouldn't have given you _ice_ powers. 'True love thaws a frozen heart.' _Thaws._ Not freezes._

"Maybe I just don't have to follow your rules," he shouted at the absent moon. "Is that it? Is that what you're telling me?"

The stars didn't answer—they never did, no more than the moon—and the vacant void where the moon should have been threatened to swallow him whole. He threw himself up into it, a trail of ice shattering against the stone below him in the spot where Emma had lain.

-o-

Jack went back to Arendelle—of course he went back to Arendelle. Jack never left the places he was supposed to leave; that's what got him sent to Arendelle in the first place, staying too long in the one town he had real friends, even knowing he had the rest of the world to see. The thing is, in three hundred years, you see a lot of the world; Jack didn't need to keep traveling, when the only thing he hadn't seen was someone who believed in him.

So he ran back to Arendelle through a sky replete with stars, and tumbled into the castle through Elsa's window, worried that Pitch had come for her while the moon could not keep watch. But she slumbered still amidst the comforters she never could keep over herself in the night; Jack leaned back against the windowsill, folding his arms around himself and his staff, and he was so busy taking in the way her unbraided hair curled over her eyes that he didn't notice how deep the shadows beside her bed had become.

-o-

He found Anna striding toward him the next morning as he, yawning from lack of the sleep he didn't need, ambled through the castle halls, heading for town and children in serious need of fun. He raised one hand lazily in greeting. "Hey, Anna, wanna build a—"

She strode up to him and punched him.

"Ow, hey!" Jack said from the floor, holding the back of his hand to his nose. "What the—"

"What did you do to my sister?"

"I—what? I didn't do anything to Elsa!"

She hiked up her skirts and looked ready to kick him. Jack scrambled backwards until he was flattened against the wall. "Anna! What are you talking about!"

"She woke up this morning and she _got to work_," said Anna furiously. Jack paused, eyeing her warily.

"That's… normal," he said. "Elsa always gets to work. She's pretty responsible."

Anna stopped, for a long moment. Then she said belligerently, "Yeah, unlike you!"

Jack pushed himself to his feet, using the wall, then propped himself against it. "Why do people keep blaming me for being irresponsible? I'm right what it says on the package! Guardian of _Fun_. I never claimed to be an adult!"

Anna folded her arms. "Go fix it," she said.

"Fix _what_?"

"Whatever you did to Elsa! Obviously."

"I didn't do anything," he said.

"Well that's probably the problem then."

-o-

"Look," said Jack, standing in the doorway of Elsa's office. He crossed his arms and rested his shoulder against the doorframe, staff cocked the opposite direction from the angle of his body. Elsa didn't look; she hardly flinched to acknowledge his presence. It had been like that for weeks. They still kicked up fallen leaves and slid down waterfalls with Anna and Olaf, and mostly, he thought they were okay. But sometimes she wouldn't look at him; sometimes she turned whatever she was holding to ice when she talked to him; sometimes she trapped her words in her throat and didn't tell him the things she used to tell only him.

"I'm stuck," Jack said; confused, she finally glanced up, to see him at the wooden doorframe, where his sweatshirt sleeve had frozen to it. "C'mon Elsa, not fair."

"Oh, I'm sorry—" She was up out of her chair and halfway to him, hands outstretched to unthaw the fabric, when she saw his grin and stopped. He pulled easily away from the door and stepped into the room; her smile was thin, but he clung to the fact that it was a smile. She turned away from him to return to her slipshod mountains of paperwork—did she ever_ not_ have a document to read?—but he said,

"Hey, I meant that, though." `

Elsa paused, and turned around to perch on the edge of her desk, hands clasped in her lap. Jack met her eyes, and found he had to look away, for there was nothing inside them. She was building up winter walls again, leaving reflective panes across her gaze so even he couldn't see what was behind them. He meant to change that—it was just that some nights he didn't know how to do so without holding her hand and cradling her close and telling her he didn't let her kiss him because he wanted to kiss her first. And by _didn't know how_, he meant he didn't _want_ to do it any other way—and on those nights, which were quickly becoming every night, he walked into the hills and asked the moon if he could.

_Dying alone in the cold gave me ice powers. Saving my sister was an added bonus._

The moon turned its face away in eternal silence. Perhaps the Man in the Moon couldn't hear him, Jack thought, because his younger self was halfway around the world shouting from another mountaintop.

Jack shook his head slightly, running his hand through his hair. "I'm stuck, okay," he said again, examining the geometric wheat patterns running along the hem of Elsa's skirt. "You keep saying I'm three hundred years old, but I'm not. I'm seventeen, or eighteen, or however old I was when I died—I don't really remember anymore." He glanced up to see her watching impassively, but he knew her too well; no one else would see the way she nervously pulled just a tiny bit of her lip between her teeth, the way she winced at the mention of his death. She'd never liked being reminded of how close her sister came to dying for her mistakes. Jack suffered the same reminders, only his ran in his veins: he hadn't checked the ice, he had let Emma walk out on such a tenuous thread of safety above dark water and death. His little sister had nearly died for those mistakes—instead, he had.

His age wasn't the only thing that was stuck; he was still, would always be, mired in guilt—guilt and that screaming fear when the ice cracked beneath Emma's skates. Dying was his atonement; dying had frozen him forever in that moment. Sometimes when he closed his eyes he could still hear the panic in her voice, could still feel the cold searing into his bare feet, could hear his own heart beating as loudly as the fragmenting ice. He'd been reliving the scene more and more recently, since visiting Burgess. He'd watched Emma nearly die over and over on the ice over and over since watching her nearly die on some illusory street corner of memory.

Jack took a deep breath and clenched his fist until needles of ice split his palm, waking himself back up. Elsa was still waiting, quietly, for him to make his point. Elsa was still pretending not to be bothered by what he was saying.

"I'm not immortal," he said, "I'm just frozen. I'm not going to die, but I'm not going to grow up, either. Not like you are. I'm just going to keep being exactly me, right now, in this moment, okay? Seventeen." He shrugged. "Eighteen. Whatever."

Elsa met his eyes, and he thought he saw something crack. "I might have to marry someone from Weselton," she said.


	16. For Queen and Country

A/N: Ah, guys, I struggled with the next couple chapters a lot, so I hope they're not boring for you. :c Cheers to all reviewers, I love you dearly! Especially you, reviewing nearly every chapter—you know who you are. ;D

16 (For Queen and Country)

Just for a fraction of a second, Jack was stunned to speechlessness. Then his staff clattered to the floor, spraying out a crazed spiral of ice as it twisted and fell. Jack flung out his hands in disbelief, his whole body rocking with the shock. "What?" he said, stepping forward, then pitching back on his heels. "Not—the Duke?"

"No." She buried her face in her hands, disturbing a fringe of cornsilk hair that fell across her fingers. Jack was alarmed to see she was wearing gloves, but they didn't stop the frost from dancing down the fabric and crackling through her hair. "Not that, at least. His son, it seems. I met him at the summit meeting, that first one? When you came? Do you remember?" She dropped her hands so she could see him; for a moment, he caught a glimpse of her as she'd been before they'd complicated things.

"Couldn't forget it," he said.

"We ice skated together."

Jack looked revolted. "That was supposed to make it _easier_ for you guys to negotiate."

"No. It was supposed to make them less afraid of me. Well, it worked." She closed her eyes. "They're not afraid of me anymore. Now they think I'm a perfectly lovely queen who's more interested in staying friends than fighting a war. And I suppose they're right."

She sighed, and then she slammed her hand backward across her desk, tossing papers and seals into a cold frenzy. The wintry whirlwind flurried and surged, tearing documents to shreds, setting the window to banging against its frame. _"Weselton_."

"Wait, can we go back to why?" Jack slowly bent down to pick up his staff; when he touched it, ribbons of snow froze up the length of it, twisting into jagged spirals around the crook. "War?"

"Politics," Elsa said disdainfully.

"Well, yeah, I guessed that one." He eyed her miniature storm. "I didn't think it was true love or anything."

She bit her lip at the phrase, and he winced. Elsa slid off her desk—the storm settled, leaving fragments of paper and ink drifting among the snow—and took to pacing in front of it.

"Basically, my parents offended some… important people when they closed our borders. And I—" She smiled wryly; it was more like a grimace. "I offended them again when I…" She hesitated, then finished, "Turned into a monster."

He frowned. "You did not tur—"

"No, I have it on good authority that I did."

"What does that—?"

She shook her head, cutting him off. "When I attacked them, then."

"You were scared—"

"Yes, exactly." She pivoted, folding her arms as if trying to hold the unruly ice spirals within her. "And they—"

"Just to be clear, by 'they' you mean the Duke of Weasel-Town, right?"

"Yes. Don't call him that. I might end up being the Duchess of Weasel-Town at some point." She paused. "In addition to being the Queen of Arendelle? Oh, I don't know, I don't understand succession or titles or anything." She glowered down at the frosted footprints she was leaving on the floor. "Another thing to ask the advisors. As if there aren't enough already."

"Don't bother," said Jack. "You aren't marrying anyone from Weselton."

Elsa laughed, but there was no joy to the sound. "You don't get to make that decision, Jack."

He tightened his grip on his staff until his knuckles turned white, pacing almost in unison with her. "No. You make it then. Tell them you won't."

"I could," she said. "If I wanted to start a war. The Duke was, did I mention, _very_ offended by the appearance of my powers—which, he claims, nearly killed him. He will only accept a formal apology and my hand in marriage to his son." She faltered just long enough to sync her steps with Jack's, though she didn't seem to notice. "Otherwise he will not agree to reopen trade."

"Then don't trade with him!" Jack's sudden gesture sent pale slashes sparkling across the walls. "You did say you never would again!"

"War, Jack." She stopped pacing, doing an about-face to stare him down. "Do you still think we could win a war by ourselves? Without anyone getting hurt?"

"That was never a qualification of our war," Jack said, sticking his hands in his pockets.

"It's a qualification of _my_ war. I'm not hurting anybody." Her fists clenched; her gloves grew a row of spikes over the back of her knuckles. She almost seemed to be talking to herself when she muttered again, "I'm _not_ hurting anybody."

Shaking the ice off her hands, she sighed. "And our economy needs it. We've already reopened trade with the Southern Isles. They, of course, have been falling all over themselves to apologize for their little brother." Jack opened his mouth for an enraged protest, but she headed him off. "Hans is still in jail, they had nothing to do with it, and _we need the trade_. Jack, stop looking at me like that. You don't know anything about politics."

"And I'm happier that way," he grumbled.

Elsa reached out and grabbed his arm as he strode past her, writing his anger into jagged footprints that marched alongside her more graceful patterns of frost. He turned to face her, and she looked so fragile in that moment, eyebrows drawn up, lips set in a grim line; he wanted to fly to Weselton and give it a taste of its own eternal winter.

"You can stop it, Jack," she said.

"How? Anything."

She smiled bitterly. "Don't say 'anything.'"

"Elsa—"

"I can tell them I'm already engaged."

"Then do that."

"There has to be someone on the other end of the engagement, Jack."

He stared at her for a minute, and then he got it. He backed up a step, and she let go of his arm.

"Okay, I don't know anything about politics, but that doesn't sound like it would work."

"I've figured that part out already."

"_That's_ what you were thinking of? Instead of how to actually solve this?"

"This _would_ solve it," she snapped. "You are essentially an emissary from the north. I can make that official. I'm the queen. It'll work."

"If you're the queen, just _don't do it_."

"No. I have to refuse the Duke's offer without offending him. 'Sorry I don't want to' does not fulfill those terms. 'I'm deeply sorry, but I have already promised myself to another alliance, perhaps we can come to a different arrangement' is politically irritating, but acceptable." She turned around, planting her hands on her desk and leaning over it, arms stiff, muscles tense. "It would just be a… an official marriage, Jack. It wouldn't have to be anything else."

He smiled humorlessly, tilting his head back. An array of icicles greeted him, a cavern of stalactites grown from the combined dissatisfaction of Jack Frost and the snow queen. "I don't think I'm ready to risk the kissing," he said to the ceiling. "And I'm pretty sure that happens at weddings. You know, 'you may kiss the bride' and all that. Or maybe you guys don't say that yet."

Elsa made a frustrated noise. "Yes. You kiss at a wedding. But I don't think 'Political Marriage's Kiss' falls under the same category as 'True Love's Kiss.'"

"Love for queen and country," Jack suggested.

"Jack, if you won't help—I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked. I haven't been sleeping, and it's clearly affecting my judgment."

The accusation stung, dragging the mild smile from his face. "Why does it have to be me?" he demanded, shrugging expansively. "I don't belong here—"

"Don't you?" she countered. "Jack, you've been here for _months_. It's almost winter. Don't you live here now?"

He opened his mouth, shut it again, and then said angrily, "They wouldn't even be able to _see_ me."

"They wouldn't have to. There aren't any rules that say I have to introduce my spurned suitor to my betrothed." She sighed and took up pacing again, hands clasped in front of her. "Why you? Why do you think, Jack? Because I know I can live with you. Because the only other man with whom I am acquainted is Kristoff, and he intends to marry Anna." She paused. "I have also interacted with Hans."

Jack grinned mirthlessly. "So basically, the only guys you know are involved with your sister."

"Hans is not _involved_ with my _sister_."

"Well no, not anymore."

"Jack! This is serious!"

"I'm not." He shrugged, his grin sliding away. "I never am."

She stopped moving and nodded once, shortly. "Alright. I'm sorry I asked. Please leave." She glanced at the minced remains of her documents and her shoulders slumped. "I need to salvage some of this."

"Look." He held out a hand; snowflakes danced in his palm like glacial fireflies. "Here's how I'll help. C'mon."

"I don't have time to play."

"Your parents never let you out of the castle," he said. "Now that they're gone and you're free—_free_, Elsa, remember how you escaped all that?—you still never leave the castle. So come on. You're gonna come with me, and we're going to make some friends." She stared at his outstretched hand, wavering. "I'll introduce you to Alva and Embla," he pressed on, letting a smile start at the corners of his mouth. He closed his hand in an instant, sending a puff of snow into the air, and spun around, leaping up to perch on his staff. Once more, he extended a hand, reaching down toward her. The windows rattled, then burst open.

"We'll take the air express," he said.

Elsa looked at him with such vulnerability the he almost couldn't stand it. He tensed, and the words scrolled on repeat across his thoughts: _friends, right? friends, right? friends, right? _

It was a good thing she was wearing gloves when she finally took his hand, because he didn't think he would be able to stand the touch of her skin, the agony of that cold between them, the cold that only they understood. He didn't think he would have been able to resist.

He swung her up into the air and the wind carried them down together. "Not sleeping?" he asked, as they dove through the scent of approaching winter.

"Bad dreams," she said, as they landed between the warm glow of hearthfires through window glass.

-o-

Elsa went tumbling backwards through the light dusting of snow, Jack's ball of ice and magic having taken her square in the stomach. She climbed to her feet laughing, which is what he'd hoped for; Alva and Embla tackled her from behind, and the three dissolved into a pile of giggles while Jack summoned the other children to the biggest pre-winter snowball fight they'd ever seen. It was late autumn, though too early in the season yet for heavy snowfall; but as Jack's and Elsa's magic burst over the streets of Arendelle, a gradual slush accumulated, then a slope of fresh powder leading out to the grass hills that punctuated the town. Six children bombarded the queen with snow and themselves; she rose out of the middle of them with a snowball the size of the smallest one hovering over her head, an expression of false ferocity fighting the laughter for control of her face. Children screamed in mock terror and went fleeing down the hillside, flinging themselves onto looping slides built by Jack.

It was the last time he saw Alva and Embla laughing; the next time, they would be pressed against his legs as hoping to find warmth there, shivering so hard they could hardly talk; and Alva, begging, "Jack, you c-c-ontrol the snow, c-c-c-c-c—" A deep breath to start over: "_Can't_ you make it g-g-go away?"

He would recoil from them, tense, knowing he would only make them colder than they already were; he would look out across the fjord and say, "Nope. Only the queen can do that?"

And Embla, quiet, pleading: "Then Jack, can you ask her to s-s-s-_stop it_?"

"Yeah, you're f-f-f-_friends_ with her."

_Friends, right? _

"I'll ask her," he would say, turning his gaze to the castle where Elsa closed farther and farther in on herself, so distant she would barely talk to him except to argue: _Look at you, Elsa, you once made a _palace out of ice! _Sentient snowmen! And now you make ice rinks and dresses—_"We'll get winter to go away."

And a week later, dead, their tiny bodies finally free from the constant shivers, their faces pale and slack and why did the dead have to be _cold_—

But for now, faces split with smiles; Elsa introduced to their parents, who already knew Jack from Alva's and Embla's tales and rumors trickled down from the castle and throughout the town; the sunset drifting over the snow all glittering with magic and light. Jack and Elsa raced each other back to the castle, building icy obstacle courses for each other as they ran: a row of glacial pillars burst out of the ground, Jack running up and across them while they grew, simultaneously casting slippery hurdles for her to jump—or blast out of her way, depending on how tangled she was in her skirts by the time she hit them. At the peak of the highest pillar, Jack leapt; a new pedestal exploded directly in front of Elsa, and he landed lightly upon it, crouching down in one smooth motion. She careened to a halt and he flourished his hand before her, a branching crystalline rose curling around his hand. Snow powdered its silken petals, which gathered a rosy sheen in the dying sunlight; its thorns were as long and slender as spears of frost, and its stem split into a transparent root system not unlike the patterns of rime on Jack's hoodie.

Jack grinned at her, exhilarated at the joy of seeing Elsa truly laugh again, at having _succeeded_ at something today. He wanted to thank her, to make her blush and smile—but she only stared at the rose, stared at him, turned away.

The next thing he knew, he was sprawled on the ground; his frozen pedestal had shattered beneath him, sending him crashing into a snowbank. He sat up slowly, rubbing the back of his neck; Elsa stood a few feet away, shoulders hunched, folding in on herself, shaking slightly with what he thought—in stuttering horror—were stifled sobs.

"Elsa?"

"Jack, I can't." She didn't sound like she was crying. She sounded calm. She sounded—cold.

He stepped forward, reaching out a hand to lay on her shoulder, but as if she could sense him coming, she pulled away. "Can't what?" he asked.

She looked at him, tears frozen solid in sparkling tracks down her cheeks. Another broke its bounds and came rippling down; it slowed and hardened in a row of droplets like dew clinging to her face. "Can't keep pretending I don't love you with you dashing about acting like you do."

"I do love me," he said. She pulled a wry grimace. He stuffed his hands in his pockets, supporting his staff against himself.

"I never said—I didn't," he told her, looking past her, to the darkness spreading over the snow as night swept in.

"So you do."

"I didn't say that either." He scuffed at the ground, kicking powder into the air. "And I won't."

"Jack." When she said his name, it trembled like his sister crying, like Pitch's trap baited and set.

"Don't," he said. "I'm not going to change. I never change."

"If you don't think you belong here," she said, "please, just go home."

"I can't," he said.

"Can't, because your time travel… device… isn't working, or can't because you don't want to?"

He was silent for a long moment. Elsa turned away from him, moving back to the castle, cape and skirts dragged over the sifting of snow, picking up a white hem as she walked.

"Both," said Jack, standing in the darkness, the staff on his shoulder glowing faintly blue with the ice at his fingertips. "Which kind of sucks."


	17. Bad Dreams

A/N: Uh… I don't know why this chapter is so short. Probably because I was bored of it. LUCKILY things kick up a notch in the next chapter, so you won't have to suffer for very long. :p

P.S. I forgot to mention last chapter that I don't have any concept of politics/economics/RULING A KINGDOM OKAY so I'm really sorry if none of that was accurate hahaha

17 (Bad Dreams)

He took to trying the clockwork snow-globe every single night after that, as if trying to prove to himself that he really did want to go home. Those were hard nights, wandering the dreamless dark of the castle corridors, twisting the base of the globe, shaking it, throwing it against the wall in his frustration.

Once, Anna slammed open her door in an outburst of mussed hair and sleep-clogged eyes, awoken by the crashing, the angry yelling that accompanied it. "Who's attacking?" she demanded. "I'll fight them! In the middle of night! How rude!"

Then her eyes fell on the snow-globe, rattling around on the floor, flickering lights and images against the wall. "Oh," she said. "Jack. Are you leaving now?"

"No." Jack bent down to retrieve the faulty globe, fuming. "Just dropped it."

Anna eyed him suspiciously. "Lemme tell you something, Jack," she said.

"Shoot."

She folded her arms and cocked her hip against her doorframe, undoubtedly trying to pose a severe picture; her cloud of hair ruined the effect. "We are _not_ friends," she said. Jack's head jerked up, his eyes widening. He took a step back, his staff angling toward the ground as his fingers went limp. "In fact, I really don't like you. Do you know that?"

"I guess I do now," he said.

"Yeah. You better." She jabbed a finger at him, interrupting herself by yawning. "Ahh, sorry. Oh. Right. I _don't_ like you. And I'm really just not going to until you fix things with Elsa." She scowled fiercely, brushing a lock of hair from her face.

"So if you leave? I don't care. Do you hear me? I don't care!"

"You're going to wake Elsa," he said. She took a step closer, giving him a squinty-eyed look that she probably thought looked intimidating. Since the recollection of her punch was still relatively fresh, he backed up again.

"If you go away," she said, "you might stop hurting her." She frowned, then sighed.

"But probably not. You're apparently just _really good_ at hurting Elsa now. It's like you took a class or something."

Jack retreated until he hit the wall, this time forced back not by a physical threat, but by the sharp pain of the accusation. "Hey," he started, but Anna didn't let him go on.

"Jack, you're not even trying! You just—you know—fly around and act like you really like her, and I _know_ she likes you because I'm her sister, and sisters totally know these things. Except neither of you are actually _doing_ anything, which is kind of dumb? I mean, really dumb. And every time I try to _tell_ her to, she yells at me. And since I'm still pretty sure you did something and it's obviously your fault, it's… obviously your fault. Whatever it is." She slumped back against the wall. "Ugh! I really want to hit you again."

"It'd be cool if you didn't though," he said, dragging fingers through his hair, looking away.

"And I'm totally cool." Anna glared at him, then yawned again. "D-dang. Not sleeping great lately, I won't lie."

"Bad dreams?" Jack asked quietly. She narrowed her eyes at him.

"How did you know?"

He shrugged, trying for a weak grin. "I'm a Guardian," he said, hefting his staff onto his shoulder. "We know stuff. About things."

"Like the inside of my head?" she demanded. "You Guardians get up to some pret-ty weird stuff. I'd kind of like it if you didn't go rifling around in there."

"Yeah," he said. "No problem."

"Thanks." She started to shuffle back into her room, then seemed to remember that she had a mission. She stomped around again, pointing at him dramatically. He wished he could find the urge to laugh at the ridiculous sight she made, standing there with her knotted hair and half-lidded eyes and frilly nightgown.

"Jack Frost!" she said. "No, that's definitely not enough. Do you have more names than that?"

"Do you?"

She drew herself up to her full inconsiderable height. "Princess Anna of Arendelle."

"Dramatic," he said. "Jackson Overland Frost." He stuck out a hand. "Nice to meet you."

She started to take it, then shook him off like she'd touched something gross. "Ew! No. I'm mad at you. _Jackson Overland Frost_. Go away," she said. "Like seriously. If Elsa's not happy, no one's happy. Well. Olaf still seems pretty happy. But he's a sentient snowman, so he might not be programmed for other emotions. Wow! I'm really easily distracted when I'm sleep-deprived, I guess!"

Yawning, she retreated into her room. But before she closed her door, she looked at him with drooping eyes that said, "I'm gonna come after you if you keep hanging around making Elsa sad. And if you leave, maybe we'll all stop having bad dreams."

-o-

But it was the bad dreams that kept him there.

He still fought the snow-globe each night he patrolled the empty halls, hunting for signs of Pitch or his Nightmares. He saw nothing, and sometimes the snow-globe even worked, taking him somewhere else—but never home. Never back to the North Pole in the twenty-first century, never back to a brightly-lit Burgess where Jamie and his gang waited from him to come back. Once, he did drop through to the North Pole, falling free before its domed and glittering heights. Excitement surged through him, hiding radiating pangs of regret, and he ran toward it, skating over bridges and across the top of the snow.

Then he caught the yetis watching him from a distance, and there was something in the narrowing of their eyes that was… wrong. They'd never trusted him, not after the number of times he'd tried to break in; but once he'd become a Guardian, their distrust was more one of grudging tradition, not general dislike. And the shapes of the buildings—the angle of the mountain—the snowfall—

He was still in Elsa's time. Right place, wrong era.

For several long minutes, Jack Frost stood barefoot in the snow. He thought about trying to get inside, to talk to North. Maybe North would be able to fix the snow-globe and send him home.

Or maybe the yetis would just throw him back into the cold. Or maybe he would get in, and North would think it was just one more of Jack's tricks.

_Bad dreams_, said Elsa. _Bad dreams_, Anna echoed.

And maybe if he left, Pitch Black would creep back into the castle and destroy more people he cared about. Jack remembered Sandy, succumbing to surging night; the memory is so visceral he nearly drops to his knees in the snow, the agony ripping through him, the ice ripping free. He'd gotten Sandy back, he'd saved his sister—but only because he never walked away.

So Jack turned his back on the hunting yetis and begged the wind to take him back to Arendelle.

-o-

In the weeks as autumn went crashing into winter, Jack saw no sign of Pitch—no sign but increased mutters of _bad dreams_, no sign but dark glances his direction as rumor spread that the queen's rising chill was his fault. Elsa hardly left her office these days, except to sleep; she shut her advisors out of her affairs, drew up marriage contracts, ignored the children playing out her windows—left snow trails and icicled ceilings wherever she walked. Anna rushed in her wake, begging her to calm down. Elsa shut herself down tighter.

"He loves you," Jack heard Anna say from his place in the rafters. She reached out to catch Elsa's arm; Elsa didn't pull away, just looked at her sister with blank eyes. "Elsa, it's _really, really _obvious. He'd totally have gone home by now otherwise."

"Go away, Anna," said Elsa. "I have work to do."

Jack couldn't remember the last time he'd heard her say anything else.

Well—he could. He just didn't like to: their arguments had grown as bitter now as two nights after Christmas Day, with all the suspense gone and nothing left but the guilt of too many cookies and not enough cheer.

_You're such—you're such an _adult_!_

_You've been around for three hundred years, don't you think maybe you've done a little growing up yourself?_

_I _told_ you, I'm not—_

_All you do is think about the consequences_. And her voice was so cold, her expression sharp as ice shattering over him as he was reborn to a silent world of snow and solitude. _If you hadn't been so concerned about your future, we could've had a little more fun._

Jack closed his eyes and folded himself into a dark corner of the rafters and thought, _I'm a Guardian. I have to protect them. I have to help Elsa protect the children of Arendelle. The best way to do that is to protect Elsa. And Anna. Anna's my friend. I have to stay. I'm a Guardian. I'm a Guardian. I'm a Guardian._

But the mantra didn't help. He recited it over and over, until _guardian_ didn't sound like a word inside his head, until the phrase meant nothing at all, until he realized he couldn't recall the last time he had any fun.


	18. Nightfall

A/N: Uh hey I've been writing nothing but angst for three days straight and it's starting to wear me down HERE HAVE SOME DRAMA

I'm a little sleep-deprived, too, _welcome to NaNoWriMo_

18 (Nightfall)

The first snowfall of the year—the first real snowfall, not caused by Jack or Elsa working outside Mother Nature's rules—came hard and fast and early, and Arendelle drowned in the fear of it. Fear that they wouldn't have enough wood to last the winter, fear that it had come too soon to get all the crops in, fear that they would never see the spring.

Fear that their queen was not as reformed as they had let themselves believe.

And the fear bled through the castle walls. It tiptoed in and skulked in dusty shadows and snuffed out candles in the twilight. Dusk came with a chill that pervaded every room, smothering fires to mere smolders that gave off too little heat or light to ward off the night.

And Jack knew the Nightmare King was coming.

He ran through the sleeping castle, staff clutched in both hands, ready to attack the first shadow that moved on its own. He wished, in a distant part of his frantic brain, that he were outside, dancing through the drifting deluge of new snow, the _first_ snow, the day his fun was really supposed to begin. He shook the thought away, skidding around a corner, propelling himself down the next hall, momentum bouncing him off walls and sending him slipping and sliding across patches of ice that shouldn't have been there.

They were veined with black, and they didn't respond to his command.

Jack eased Elsa's door open, crouched low against the wood. The shadows of her canopy loomed over her; but as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, they resolved into the nebulous silhouette of Pitch Black, sitting on the edge of her bed.

Jack reacted without thinking, flinging himself toward the Nightmare King. Pitch didn't move; he sat straight, still as the monster waiting beneath your bed; and Jack, glancing at Elsa, expecting to see her tossing with bad dreams, found her upright, awake, watching him quietly with glittering trails of ice painted down her face.

One of Pitch's pallid hands covered hers where it rested on the bed.

The door crashed shut in a gust of wind. Jack tripped and somersaulted through the air, landing hard on a jagged patch of ice. His hand went out from under him and he hit his elbow, his staff rolling away from him. Pitch wore the shadow of a smile, and Jack rolled over, grabbing for his staff, determined not to let Pitch get his hands on it.

"Jack," said Elsa. Her voice was stiff and heavy, like musty old blankets from the back corners of the attic. "Leave my room."

Jack clambered to his feet, breathing heavily, leaned over his staff as he directed its crook toward Pitch. The Nightmare King remained motionless, though he seemed to be quavering at the edges with a barely-repressed glee.

"No," said Jack.

"That is an order," Elsa said coldly. "From your queen."

"Not my queen," said Jack quietly. "Not anymore."

"Get out, or I will call the guards."

Jack laughed harshly. "The guards? Since when have you needed the guards to—"

The force of the icicle-spear carried him backwards to the wall, pinning him to pitted and cracked wallpaper through the shoulder of his hoodie. Jack had always found it so insensitive that the former king and queen had locked their ice-bound daughter in a room decorated with snowflakes, but Elsa had never changed it. Perhaps she wanted to be reminded of them. He guessed any family, even misguided and cruel family, was better than no family at all.

Distantly, he noticed a trickle of blood curling down his collarbone; the icicle had grazed him as it flung him back against the wall.

Jack reached up and wrapped his hand around the shaft of the icicle-spear. It was nearly as long as he was tall, but he managed to pull it free, glowing with feathery patterns where he touched it. "Alright, alright," he said. "If you wanted me to leave, you only had to ask." He discarded the icicle with a casual flick of his wrist that sent it shattering on the floor, then gestured nonchalantly at Pitch. "Aren't you going to kick out Mr. Creepy over there? I don't really think he has honorable intentions."

"I see only a gentleman," said Elsa hollowly, and Jack laughed. The sound almost choked him, but he couldn't stop.

"A _gentleman_? Elsa, _what_ has he been telling you, because let me just say—"

"Oh, _Jack_," cut in Pitch finally, the slender smirk unfurling across his face far worse than any ordinary Nightmare. "What sort of lies _have _you been telling?"

"Uh," said Jack. "I'm confused. Or you're confused."

Pitch shook his head mournfully, patting Elsa's hand like a concerned father. Jack gritted his teeth to see the touch, rubbing his wounded shoulder until frost flowers bloomed in the trail of blood.

"Don't touch her," he grated.

Pitch smiled, and raised one finger to brush his knuckle along Elsa's cheek. She repressed a shudder—she hid it well, but Jack _knew_ her, could see how much she was pretending not to care.

"Don't _touch_ her!" he shouted, lunging forward with an onslaught of ice. Elsa's hand sliced upwards, and Jack's assault shattered and fell to white fragments on the floor.

"But she _needs_ me, Jack." Pitch folded his hands beneath his chin, resting his elbows on his knees, folding his body into one great hulking shadow. "Just like all children need me."

Jack scoffed, walking slowly sideways without taking his eyes off Pitch. "No one _needs_ you."

"Oh but of _course_ they do. You do, too, or hadn't you noticed." He rose to his feet, gesturing expansively at himself. "I give you a _reason_. I make you stronger. You're still here, fighting for _her—" _He twirled one finger over Elsa's head; a wreath of shadow spun and fell, landing lopsided on Elsa's waves of pale hair. She raised one hesitant hand to touch it; black threads stretched out from it to curl around her fingers. "—because of me. And hasn't it been _fun_?"

Pitch's smile could have swallowed Jack whole. Jack bared his teeth, but Pitch shrugged, unconcerned, and strolled around the bed to stare out the window. "The children made me, you know."

"Shut up," said Jack furiously. With Pitch facing away from him, he lowered his staff slightly and began edging toward Elsa. She noticed, and her ungloved hand swept a scimitar-blade of snow in his direction. He ducked and stopped moving.

"They needed an explanation for the dark things in the world," continued Pitch conversationally, looking back over his shoulder to smirk at Jack. "So they put me underneath their beds and gave me all the blame. And _then_, of course—" He turned, making an irritated swirling motion with one hand. "—they had the gall to tell me I didn't exist. After creating me. Children can be so _cruel, _you know." Pitch's smile grew hungrier and harsher with every word, grew more and more smug.

"Tell me, Jack, would you say you're more child than grown-up? Seventeen is such a… _difficult _age to quantify."

"Shut _up_!"

Jack leapt into a diving somersault, avoiding Elsa's slurry of snow as she rose to her knees and lifted her hands. His staff burst blue light and icicles as he rolled, detonating at Pitch. Pitch just chuckled, and a fluttering globe of snowflakes flared inside Jack's attack, dropping another wave of broken snow onto Elsa's comforter. A transparent wall of spikes slammed into him, throwing him once again toward the door.

"Get _out_," she said.

"Never," he said. "Elsa, I told you I wouldn't leave you alone—"

She shouted wordless fury at him and threw the force of her body into the snowstorm that raged through her bedroom. Jack crossed his arms and braced himself for it; chips of ice slashed across his face as he pressed through the whirlwind, reopening old scars so faded his skin had forgotten them. Blood ran into his eyes, but the cold numbed the pain.

Bending his knees, Jack launched himself upward, until he broke free of the top of the storm. He hovered, staff held loosely in one hand, and looked down at Elsa. She hadn't yet noticed that he had escaped; her brow furrowed with concentration, she channeled magical ferocity into the wind.

And then, to Jack's surprise, she laughed.

It wasn't the clear joy he had once heard in the sound, but there was a sense of liberation to it nonetheless, a black catharsis of wanting to see Jack Frost suffer the way he had made her suffer.

"Elsa."

The storm died in an instant, as if it had never been, but for the sweep of white across the floor. Jack let himself drop before she could regain her composure; as soon as his feet touched the ground, he readjusted his angle and launched himself at Pitch, who watched from the window-side. Gnashing teeth of the winter wind gnawed in Jack's wake, chasing him toward the Nightmare King who expected the Snow Queen to keep him from harm.

At the last second, Jack shot upward toward the ceiling again; the serpentine ivory jaws barreled into Pitch, then disappeared in a vortex of snow and the snap of Pitch's ash-colored fingers. Before he could look up again to revel in Jack's defeat, Jack plummeted toward him, cracking his staff across Pitch's chest. Surprised, Pitch's hands rose up just in time, bubbling with shadow, to hold Jack's blow back; but Jack, still hovering, kicked out. Pitch lost his balance, and Jack took advantage of the momentary calm to slam Pitch against the wall.

"Know this," he said. "Are you listening, Pitch? I am _not_, and I will _never ever be_ a _neutral party _if it involves _you_!"

It was weird how he could feel the memory changing within him with a dull ache: _"Oh, good. A neutral party." _Only now Pitch said it with a smirk, a twinge of irony, because he remembered something different, a new past, where Jack swore never to be any such thing.

"Don't make promises you don't intend to keep, Jack," said Pitch, smiling, despite being pressed against the wall with Jack's frosted staff held against his throat. "Or do you always intend to, and just turn out to be truly awful at following through?"

And he dissolved into the shadows, reforming in the gloom beside Elsa's bed.

A frantic pounding started at Elsa's door. Galaxies of frost spiraled across her comforter where she knelt in the rumpled blue fabric, and the sound of Anna shouting came urgently through the wood. Pitch laughed, spreading his arms as if to welcome in the cries of Anna's fear. Jack darted across the floor, meaning to let Anna in, but Elsa's voice stopped him—that one, trembling, "Jack." Her voice broke in the middle; it was as if she knew the sound of his dreams and echoed it on purpose, always his sister and a trap and a girl he loved all at once.

_Trap_ almost stopped him from turning back, but the other two outnumbered the betrayal that lingered in the first.

He pivoted, and she looked at him with lucent blue eyes. The ice was gone from them; they overflowed with emotion that scraped and burned at his heart, and he clenched his fist on his staff, wiping blood out of his eyes with his other hand.

"Do you love me?"

Pitch chortled heavily, pointing at Jack. "Oh, she still wants to know! Precious! Do you know what she's most afraid of right now, Jack?" Pitch glided closer, folding his hands behind his back. "I could tell you. It's really very sweet." He did a little dance, as if too pleased by Elsa's unnamed terror to contain himself in all his simple mysterious sweeping about. He paused, and a predatory grin spread across his face as he looked back to Jack.

"Tell her," he said. "Oh, this _is_ good. If you say it, I'll leave, and I won't come back."

Jack snorted. "Yeah, right."

"No, truly. She wouldn't _need_ me anymore, after all. She'd have someone _else_ to take care of her." Jack stayed silent, and Pitch chortled like he'd finally killed Christmas.

"Of course, if I _stay_, well…"

"Elsa would _never_!" Jack yelled. Bristling bullets of ice burst from his staff, each one disintegrating against windows of frost and shadow. Jack darted to his right, firing more amalgams of mist and magic as he ran. Elsa slumped back on the bed, her own powers leaving Pitch to block Jack's barrage on his own.

"Elsa would never join you!" Wild desperation gripped him, widening his eyes, intensifying the speed and fury of his attack. He leapt in close to Pitch, but retreated hastily as a shadowy palisade lunged for him in response. "She's not… not a _villain_."

"She had her chance, it's true." Pitch examined his nails disinterestedly, with the hint of a smirk curling his lip. "I expect if you had not intervened…"

"NO!" The bullets became sharp and long as Jack's hands; icicles dropped from the ceiling, forcing Pitch to encase himself in half a shell of shadow. "Tell him, Elsa!"

"Elsa, my dear," Pitch said fondly, "he still cares more about himself. But _don't_ be afraid. I shall never let that happen."

Anna's pounding at the door was joined by a thumping that sounded like either a battering ram or Kristoff throwing himself bodily at the wood. Jack yelled wordlessly and threw himself, veiled and bristling with frost, one last time toward the Nightmare King. Pitch just laughed and sank into a pool of shadow.

"I can't _wait_ for this to come to a head," said a voice from the drowning night, and the echoes of a laugh faded away as Kristoff, Anna, Olaf, and a regiment of palace guards came barreling into the room through a splintered door.


	19. Cold and Dark

A/N: I've hit the point in this story where all I care about is drama so if you were expecting a happy story with a developed plot and in character canons, _you should probably leave now_. If you were expecting tragedy, drama, and self-indulgent descriptions, congratulations, you can stick around. :p But it's _all downhill from here._

I'm probably going to finish this story in the next few days (don't worry—I'm way ahead of writing versus posting, so you still have at least a week left on reading); if I need more words for NaNo, I was playing around with the idea of switching and writing some of this story from Elsa's or Pitch's point-of-view, 'cause there's a lot of intense stuff going on in that castle that you don't know about. :p Would anybody be interested in reading that if I did? It wouldn't be as long or linear or… you know… good… because Elsa is way harder for me to characterize than Jack… but it could be fun?

19 (Cold and Dark)

Every inch of Jack hurts when he hauls himself to his feet. His hand touches his head and comes away bloody, his hair stiff with red. Dizziness strikes him like a whirlwind and he crouches down, hands laced behind his neck, shoulders slumped, looking between his knees. He has not even made a mark in the snow where he landed.

The dizziness passes, although the pain does not. He has never quite figured out the rules for wounded spirits, but he thinks that it has something to do with the strength of belief around him. There is no one here but him, and he's not even sure he still believes in himself.

And so he expects he will keep bleeding.

Jack drops one hand and holds it, palm out, in front of his face. Frost traces all the contours in his hand, making jagged creases in his life line, his heart line. He breathes across it, but the snowflakes that dance tiredly into the air are lopsided and plain and quickly fall.

Jack lets himself collapse forward, hitting both his fists into the stony snow. He knows he has magic without his staff, but the staff is a conduit, it makes him stronger—and he's been doing all this to be as powerful as possible. He's been making all his choices to stay strong when he finally stands before her. If Pitch had broken it and thrown it at his feet, Jack would have laughed and put it back together again. But it was gone, gone in a gust of mountain shadow and howling snow. He doesn't even know if he can fly without it.

Sighing, Jack lets his shoulders sag, and then he pushes himself back to his feet. The world still waltzes and laughs in his vision with the motion, but it fades back to the immobile solitude of the mountains after a moment. It is too far to walk to the North Mountain, but right now he is feeling too light-headed to coax the wind back to his command without the familiar comfort of his staff.

For three hundred years, he hadn't been without it. Except the day Pitch broke it—the day Pitch _would_ break it, centuries from now— although that memory starts to stretch within him, going brittle; Elsa told Pitch everything, he knew that breaking Jack's staff and leaving him the pieces would go badly for him; _why_ did Jack tell Elsa all about his past, in those days spent laughing in the palace? He ruined the future and never even thought of the consequences—

_You're such—you're such an _adult_!_

_You've been around for three hundred years, don't you think maybe you've done a little growing up yourself?_

_All you do is think about the consequences_.

_You're such an _adult!

_If you hadn't been so concerned about your future, Jack, we could've had a little more fun._

"Screwed that one up," Jack mutters, running a hand through his hair. Dried blood flakes off to fall like tainted snow. "What d'you think of that, Elsa? Didn't think about my future at all."

She is still miles away, and he receives no answer as he sets his sights to the north.

-o-

He doesn't know what Pitch said to Elsa, on those quiet nights of bad dreams and missing moons, where Jack—too preoccupied with his stolen snow-globe, perhaps, or simply not looking hard enough, _letting someone down_ again, like the day Sandy submitted to the violation of the nightmare sand—failed to catch him. He imagines it as the same thing Pitch said to him—will say to him? That memory wavers, but it may yet remain, Pitch might not give up on having Jack for his own, queen of snow and spirit of winter beneath the sway of the Nightmare King. He imagines every word Pitch offered him—seared into his memory even if it changes, the tantalizing lilt of promises just out of reach and unable to be forgotten no matter how he messes up history. Jack hates Pitch even more for that day because he _knew_, he knew what Jack was suffering and he was just as vulnerable, and Jack never wanted to believe that he and the Bogeyman could be the same.

But every offer that Pitch made to Jack would have hurt Elsa the same. _All those years in the shadows I thought, no one else knows what this feels like. But now I see I was wrong. _And Elsa, curled against her pillows, comforter always thrown aside because she never needed it, not even on the deepest nights—Elsa held all those fears within her as well as Jack did. Elsa had been alone for too many years, and Jack sent her huddling back into that dark.

_What goes together better than cold and dark?_

Jack clutches both hands in his hair, and the furor of emotion sends him spinning into the air at last. His flight is shaky; he falters, drops a few feet, and twists himself back up again; he is not running or gliding with the ease of three hundred years of practice, but half swimming through a reluctant dark. "Come on, Wind," he whispers, and a breeze stirs beneath him. "We're friends, aren't we?"

He wobbles and the world gyrates, a turbulence of silver and black below him. He closes his eyes, willing the dizziness to pass again, though the ache lingers. The wind picks up, whistling of winters spent together in glorious immortality; even without his staff, it recognizes him, and carries him higher and higher. The mountains are a rumpled bedspread of threadbare snow beneath him; it seems as if the ebony aurora above will reach out with questing tendrils of nightmare and tangle him in its grasp.

Jack tries not to think of how much harder this will be without his staff. Of how much more it will cost. He lets himself think that maybe he can't, deprived of his lifelong companion and losing sight of his center; that maybe he shouldn't even try.

He shoves one hand in his pocket, grasping the snow-globe nestled there. North repaired it for him before sending him back, making adjustments so that he would never be trapped with the uncertainty of whether he wanted to go home. If he tells it a time and a place now, it will take him there. It was the only way to ensure it sent him back to Arendelle, when every fiber of his being resisted the idea. The future was easier, Norway far away, the blackout zone somebody else's problem. The past is a mire of heartbreak and guilt.

_I'm not going to kill you. That's Elsa's claim. _

As he soars through the tormented sky, the agony of cold and dark that Snow Queen and Nightmare King have created together, Jack lets himself wonder if he'll even need the snow-globe when this is over.

-o-

The blizzard comes upon him like a flash of lightning out of a cloudless sky. It nearly knocks him out of the air. Snow slashes across his eyes, working its way through the threads in his sweatshirt, mocking him with malicious glee for having ever thought that a spirit of winter couldn't be cold. He never experienced the chill in the three centuries that stretched between dying under frozen water and coming back to Elsa's eternal night, but now he doesn't know if he will ever escape it. It is like drowning forever—like he was never lifted out of that frigid water, like he will always be dying. It settles into his bones, freezes every tendon, makes his veins tremble with the force of it. His teeth chatter and his breath fogs into hopeless ghosts and the snowflakes evade his control as completely as if they were summer fireflies, so far outside the realm of his magic that he couldn't even touch them.

Jack curls himself into a ball and lets the blizzard cradle him. If he had his staff, he would cajole a layer of snow out of the storm and around himself, a frosted shell to protect him from the needles of ice. He has nothing but his empty hands and his old friend the wind, and the wind is not all on his side.

He realizes it was that stab of emotion that got him into the air in the first place, but he can't summon up another such passion. Winter has moved in, and he feels nothing but the cold.

How long did it take Elsa to reach this place?

His fists clench and he kicks, thrashing against the blizzard. Part of him knows that he doesn't _need_ to fight; Elsa is waiting for him, Elsa knows he is coming. Elsa wants him to come—the storm will take him to her.

But Jack is not accustomed to being still.

He unfolds himself, cupping his hands together, weaving a tiny orb of ice together between his palms. It glows a faint aquamarine and crystallizes, and Jack aims behind him, narrows his eyes, and heaves.

The snowball hurtles into the white darkness and explodes, and the surge of magical momentum presses Jack on his own path through the snow. He doesn't go far; maybe a few feet, and then the howl of the wind pushes him back. He narrows his eyes and fires another burst into the storm, moves a little more; over and over, making steady progress, fighting the fervor of the blizzard. Little by little, as he refuses to let the storm guide him, his magic comes back to him; he goes just a bit farther each time. A grin starts to touch his face again, and he smiles through the ivory fragments that blind him.

His next gust takes him upward instead of forward. He manages to laugh, the sound swallowed by the squall, and one continuous blast of ice sends him spiraling into a loop-the-loop in slow motion, every inch he gains a new battle. But as he flips and chortles—as he lets go of his determined path straight through the storm, sending himself into an uncontrolled spin—the snow responds, the snow remembers him, the snow backs off to let him pass through its tempest fury.

-o-

The blizzard around the North Mountain is silent at its center.

It's like walking into a snow-globe the size of a mountain, but the snow is on the outside. An invisible sphere holds the storm at bay, leaving a vast and soundless space for Elsa's castle.

It is the same, and it is nothing like the castle he watched her build, all those months ago. Its basic shape remains just as it always was, a towering snowflake silhouette, but now it is black glass and filigree, it is shimmering violet constellations of crystal and snow. The slender minarets rise to jagged spearheads; rows and rows of icicle waterfalls in shades of silver and cyan cascade over the front of the palace, piercing pillars from the sky to the ground. The mountain spirals around it, stretching from stone into craggy sculptures of dancing ice; the base of the castle tumbles over the slopes below, sinking itself into the bedrock, cracking it open—Jack can see the fissures in the mountain where shadows fill the chasms, writhing and pulsing against windows made of frosted glass set into stone. It goes all the way to the earth's core, he is sure; the castle falls all the way through the earth to a fortress of nightmarish cages and lightless lead, perhaps now smothered with snow where no sunlight would ever melt it.

Jack drops himself into the muffled world, out of the chaos of the blizzard, and finds he makes footprints in the snow.

He doesn't notice at first; he simply saunters toward the castle, clothing himself in a veneer of nonchalance, staff cocked over his shoulder, free hand in his pocket. He is taking in the walkway built of black snowflakes laced together—and not one quite symmetrical, each of them just slightly warped into a raven bridge across a starless abyss. The wind keens at the edge of the silent space, as if lamenting his loss, and Jack glances back to reassure his oldest friend with a confidence he doesn't quite have—and that's when he sees them, the impressions of his bare feet, sunk deep into snow as cold as a field of powdered glass.

He leaps into the air, circling back to take them in without muddling them. Each one is like its own tiny crater to the stars; the bottom surface of each print glows with shimmering patterns of frost that he does not think he made.

Elsa is welcoming him back.

Jack laughs, and the genuine ring of delight is marred by the bitter dread that keeps him clutching the lifeline in his pocket, the snow-globe that could take him home at a moment's notice. "Isn't that nice," he says, turning his grinning face back to the castle. He flips forward to land in the snow and skips forward, reveling in the trail he leaves in his wake. The laughter bubbles in his throat; he pivots in perpetual circles, dragging his staff through the virgin surface, watching it spray and furrow and glow with his patterns of frost replicated by the girl who knew him too well. He casts his own whorls and ferns across the white carpet leading up to the intricate bridge and the dusk-lit castle; they dance in his tracks and spread out to cover the slope, and before long, he cannot even be sure which patches of frost he created and which Elsa is leaving for him.

Jack flips and cavorts all the way up to the bridge. Up close, the surface appears slick and slimy; indigo shimmers across the layers of interlocked snowflakes, and they _writhe_, almost imperceptibly, the way shadows move at the corner of your eye. Looking at it makes him a little nauseous, and he doesn't relish touching it.

But then, he doesn't intend to go into the castle. Not just yet.

Instead, he steps off the edge.


	20. A Fury of Stars

A/N: Does anybody even read these notes? You probably just skip to the chapter, don't you. I could say anything here. _Anything_. :1 I had a dream that one of my reviewers was dating a Naruto voice actor. I thought that you, my reviewers, should know that. Only you probably don't, since you probably skipped to the chapter. xD OKAY GO HAVE DRAMA

20 (A Fury of Stars)

Jack stretches himself out and laces his hands behind his head and lets the cliffs plunge past him as he falls. Wind tears past him, ripping his hair into his eyes, billowing the overlarge sleeves of his hoodie. He crosses his legs and smiles at the retreating sky, the blizzard still raging over its invisible dome like a fury of stars.

He doesn't think about what's waiting for him at the bottom.

An obsidian fog curls up from the chasm, reaching for his falling form. It brushes his scarred cheek like a lover's kiss; he shudders and pulls a grimace through his smirk. "Getting a little too friendly, aren't you?" he asks the mist; it coils across his body and pulls him down, and the descent doesn't quite seem to last forever.

Just before the ground yawns up beneath him, he flips over, landing in a crouch, one hand on the black stone at the center of the earth. He rises and squints into the darkness, running his hand through his hair. He was right: he still stands in snow, though his footprints no longer glitter; there is no light down here to reflect off the lace. There is only a smudgy darkness and the toxic fog.

Jack takes a deep breath, exhales it into specters of frost, and creeps into the gloom. He presses himself against the wall, moving slowly and quietly and trying not to be afraid. His fear, he is sure, will telegraph his presence more deafeningly than any real sound.

His hand drifts behind him as he skulks, obliterating the trail of his footprints in the dusting of snow.

Jack scouts around a corner and the sight that greets him invokes a memory so visceral he doubles over with the pain of it. It shouldn't cripple him so completely, but he's weak, his missing his staff, there aren't very many people left who believe in him—he's fading, and the brightest thing about him now is his memories. They overwhelm the incorporeal form that remains to him: the ornate scrollwork of Pitch's iron cages, the layer upon layer of archways with nothing inside them, the broken columns and ruined dreams that scatter the earthen floor. It looks just the same as it will two hundred years from now, except the globe that will glow golden in the twenty- first century is now frosted and pale. Except that all the cages drip with asymmetrical snowflakes that look like they're made of tar. Except that snow covers the ground and the archways drop icicles like portcullises and black fog weaves in and out of gargoyle- snowmen posted on high pillars.

Jack drops to his knees and throws up, which he finds sickeningly impressive, considering he can't remember the last time he ate. Cookies at the North Pole, probably, but would that be before he first went to Arendelle, or after he first ran away from it?

"Hey! Who's there?"

Scowling at the floor, he wipes his mouth on his glazed sleeve and walks the rest of the way into the vault. He's hardly got any chance of staying hidden now, but—

"I'm warning you, I'm so ready to fight!"

"—Anna?"

The distant voice, its echoes off the vaulted space and the iron bars making it at first unrecognizable, pauses and then yells, "_Jack_? What took you so long?! You're like the slowest rescue _ever_!"

He takes off running through the labyrinth of debris and dark stairways, launching himself into the air to grab onto the side of one of the hanging cages. It swings with his weight, the tarlike snowflakes chiming wetly against each other. "What are _you _even doing here?" He leaps to the next, another, another still. "You were supposed to stay in the castle! Where it's _safe_!"

"Safe," she scoffs, as he crashes into the cage that holds her, lacing his fingers through the cold metal and setting the whole thing to swaying. "Your definition of 'safe' is kind of weird, Jack, I dunno if you noticed but the eternal winter- night is _everywhere_. Including the castle? Where we don't really have any firewood left? So yeah. Pretty much still in danger of freezing to death, okay. And I wasn't letting you go after my sister alone." She sounds like there's an edge of tears behind her determined façade. Jack screws up his face and hits his head gently against the bars. He wants to ask her if she even remembers the last time she tried to go after Elsa. If she even remembers setting off for the North Mountain by herself, like she had before, as if it had worked the first time; if she remembers the blizzard that met her head on like a dragon, swallowing her whole. All Elsa's barriers are gone; she no longer hesitates to consider her sister a casualty of conquest. Anna would have died in that raging storm of stars if Jack hadn't gone after her the minute he found out she had left.

"Where's Kristoff?" he asks, instead of reminding her that her sister no longer cares if she lives or dies. "He's not gonna randomly show up here, too, is he?"

"I don't know where Kristoff is!" Anna shouts, and the tears break through her barriers. "We broke up!"

Jack leans away from the bars of the cage as far as he can without letting go. "That's not the way he sees it."

"I don't care how he sees it!" she says furiously, beating her fist uselessly against the metal. "Ow! He _left_ me!"

"Yeah, he—"

"You know what, Jack? I don't care what you're going to say!"

"He went to help the kids!"

"I _know_!" She let her forehead fall against the filigree steel that held her cage together. "I know he did. And he left me to sit around and be _useless_ like a—like a _princess_! And no way. No way was I going to not help Elsa."

"Help _Elsa_?" he says, disbelievingly.

"Yes, Jackson Frost!" Her head comes up and the tears are gone and she points accusingly at him through the bars. "_Elsa_! Because I'm her sister! And I'm on her side right now because you _left her_ and you left all of us and I—I know how it feels and—" She tapers off and rolls herself around to slump back against the metal shafts of the cage.

"I miss Kristoff," she says in a small voice.

"Well, I dunno if you've seen his new getup," says Jack. "But he's extra manly for when you guys are back together. Hey, can we stop the shouting now? Pitch is gonna here us."

"Pitch has already heard you," says a bored voice, and Jack nearly lets go of the side of the cage. Anna hits her head on the metal in her shock.

They both hunt for the source of the voice, but there is nothing down here but shadows and snow—and the shadows move, stretching across the ruins below them, rising up the walls. "Jack," it says, issuing from metal and stone and dusk, all around them. "You made it. Queen Elsa was beginning to worry you wouldn't."

"She could've made it a little easier for me," Jack says irritably.

"But we all know you wouldn't have found that fun at _all_."

"No, probably not." Jack scans the room for the darker silhouettes, but the real Pitch doesn't make himself known until he speaks again.

"You're so utterly predictable, Jack Frost."

Jack swings around, suspended one- handed from Anna's prison, to find Pitch lounging on the twisted base of the hanging cage behind him. His chin rests on his fist, his elbow against a metal rim; his robe drapes into shadow over the abyss.

"We all appreciate it, you know. It makes it so much easier for us to manipulate you."

Jack grits his teeth and throws up the hand that he isn't using to attach himself to Anna's cage. A slow sphere of frost gathers into existence there, but Pitch lifts one finger, shaking it chidingly.

"Ah ah," he says, and the motion shifts into a whorl of shadow, and then Jack's staff twirling between his ashen fingers. "Play nice when I have something you want." He gestures carelessly toward Anna. "Well. Two somethings."

Anna grabs the bars of her cage and rattles them furiously, nearly dislodging Jack. "You don't _have_ me!"

Pitch chuckles, smiling almost fondly at Anna. "She's not afraid of me, you know."

"No, I'm not!"

"Most people only _pretend _they're not afraid of me." Pitch smiles pointedly at Jack, shaking the stolen staff in his direction. "But she genuinely _has no fear_. At least—" Pitch uses his free hand to push himself to his feet. "—not of _me_." The smirk that cuts across his face gives even Anna pause, and Pitch shakes his head, sighing.

"Ah, well. At least she can _see_ me. She certainly believes in me, fear or no. And isn't it _nice_, Jack"—Pitch disappears, and Jack twists from his precarious perch, hunting for Pitch's reappearance—"to have a _pretty, little girl_—"

Pitch is inside Anna's cage, looming over her, eyes burning into hers. Jack slams into the side of the cage, sending frantic spirals of frost across the metal surfaces.

"—_believe_ in you."

Anna takes a swing at Pitch, trying to grab Jack's staff at the same time. The motion is awkward and uncoordinated; Pitch, laughter echoing eerily throughout the cavernous room, slides backwards through the bars of her cage, which swings in slow motion, like tattered fabric in a breeze. Pitch comes to rest balanced on one point of the scrollwork base; Jack climbs to the top of the cage, curling one hand around the heavy chain and looking down at the Nightmare King.

"Looks like you've only got one thing I want, then," he says. "Since the other has herself."

"Oh, sure, but I'll throw in the other for free," says Pitch, examining one of his sleeves as if checking for damage. "Should you give _me_ what _I_ want, of course."

"Whatever he wants, Jack, don't give it to him! I'll get myself out!" Anna latches onto two of the bars and begins hauling on them as if determined to pull them apart through brute strength.

"I don't think I have anything you want," Jack says, looking back at Pitch, hands in his hoodie pocket.

"Don't you?" Pitch drops his hand, sliding it behind his back to intertwine with the other, still holding Jack's staff. Jack's fingers curl around the snow- globe nestled into his sweatshirt, waiting—hoping—to take him home.

"You can leave," says Pitch.

"What?"

"Wait, what?"

"Leave," says Pitch. "Go home to your Guardians, and take that infernal girl"—he points to Anna, who has stopped tugging on her prison to stare at him—"with you, and simply _do not come back_. You shall have your staff, I shall have my queen, and we shall all be content."

"Yeah, except for the rest of Arendelle," says Anna hotly.

"What does the rest of Arendelle matter?" Pitch says quietly, catching and holding Jack's gaze. "Your children are safe from me. The people who matter will be happy. You, Anna—"

"I will not!"

"—Elsa—"

"She won't either!"

"Anna, shut up." Jack is searching Pitch's gaze, trying to find the betrayal he knows is lurking there. Pitch tried this once before. But that time, Pitch wasn't—

"_Jackson O—"_

"Stop saying my name," Jack says irritably, breaking eye contact with Pitch so he can lean over the side of Anna's cage and glare at her, upside down. "It doesn't help, okay? And it kinda makes you sound like my mom."

Anna scowls at him and he flips himself back up to sit, ankles crossed, on the edge of the cage's roof. He stares at Pitch, who merely widens his eyes innocently—

And then the smile starts, unfurling slowly from a smirk into a full- fledged guffaw, until Jack is curled over himself laughing and Pitch looks like he wants to slap him.

"You're afraid!" says Jack.

"Don't be absurd," says Pitch, but he looks unnerved. Jack leaps to his feet.

"No, you really are afraid! _That's _why there are no Nightmares down here! You're not sure they wouldn't turn on you. _You're _afraid that I'm not going to mess up. You think I can take Elsa back from you!"

"I don't," says Pitch quietly. "I do not, for one palpitation of my unbeating heart"—he presses his hand over the space where it should be—"_actually believe that_. All the same." He shrugs, and holds up Jack's staff. "I am not averse to some… assurance."

Jack folds his hands into his hoodie pocket again and lets his grin fade away, eyeing the staff. He longs for the feel of it in his grip again, longs for something to do with his hands, which cannot bear to be still. The moment Pitch broke it—will break it—is a scar in his memory, a physical agony he cannot ever forget. It still burns when he thinks about it. But the journey here without it, the absence of it, knowing he could have it back—that is a different agony: a dull ache in his chest, an emptiness to his hands, which flex and curl as if he is already holding it again.

He rubs his thumb along the snow- globe in his pocket instead, thinks of the shining North Pole, fresh cookies and cocoa; thinks of Sandy's scintillant dreams, Tooth's enthusiasm for everything, banter with Bunny. He thinks of Jamie and the gang and snow days.

"You swear?" he says.

"On this eternal night," says Pitch.

"Yes," says Jack.


	21. Broken Butterfly

21 (Broken Butterfly)

"Jack! No!"

"Don't be so dramatic, Anna."

Pitch just laughs, an expression crossing his face that Jack thinks must be relief. He allows himself his own small smirk and holds out his hand.

Pitch tosses the staff; it spirals lopsidedly and Jack snatches it out of the air. He closes his fist around the grooved wood in a flare of frost; the sensation of _completeness_ is not unlike having recovered a security blanket after having to face the dark without it. Grinning, Jack straightens up and gestures down toward Anna.

"And part two?"

"No thank you," says Anna primly, nose in the air, gripping the bars that she has not yet managed to budge. "I will get myself free. _Without having to betray anyone_." Jack rolls his eyes.

"Yeah, I still want her out," he says to Pitch, who cocks a brow and motions. A patch of gloom shifts and writhes up the side of the cage; with a creak of hinges, a door swings open. Anna folds her arms and stays where she is.

"Anna, come _on_," Jack says.

"No. I'm not going anywhere with you, Jack Frost, you selfish, _conniving_, mis—misbegotten son of a—a—Olaf! And a—"

"Anna," he says. "C'mon. We're friends, aren't we?"

"No, we are definitely not! Not even if you—"

He holds out his hand to her, quirking an eyebrow, and she stops. Her gaze drops, and then she meets his eyes again.

"Oh," she says. "Okay."

He nods, and Anna steps toward the open door. Jack turns around, bows insolently to Pitch, and puts out his foot to walk into the empty air.

And Pitch sees it—sees that one fear that's been crouching behind Jack's every action, every word, every _thought_. He knows why Jack stalled and dawdled and detoured, he knows why Jack said yes—

Pitch's eyes go wide, his hands come together, he is slashing shadow across the space between them with all the force he can muster. Jack's staff sweeps up, cutting across the roiling dark blade; ice and ink collide in a spray of black shards and white light. Jack covers his eyes with his sleeve, momentarily blinded. When he drops his arm, Pitch is gone.

A sickening instinct sends Jack turning, turning, like the world is in slow motion and he can't move any faster than it will let him. The ice-water in his veins runs as cold as shock.

Pitch stands behind Anna. Anna is falling.

She crumples forward, veins of black and red zigzagging across the back of her spring-green dress, like poisoned lightning, like the cracks in the ice beneath him as he fights to save his sister. Jack can feel it again, that same sensation, of the world going out from under him even before he fell through the ice—that distant feeling of falling, of failing. All the breath goes out of his lungs and he is left gasping. Anna makes a small sound of pain, and then she stops moving.

"That," says Pitch coldly, "is what happens when someone reneges on a deal with _me_." Something glitters in the gloom around his hands, dripping blood and shadows and the faintest glint of ice-melt. "Maybe you can learn something."

"That—that wasn't—" Jack can't find himself in the maelstrom, the panicked amalgam of adrenaline and disbelief spinning around him. He's not sure he has limbs anymore, or a tongue. He's just a leaf in this tangled wind.

"You have never _once_ intended to back out," Pitch hisses, the snow-studded obsidian blade spiraling out to surround him in a turbulence of filigree night. "All that _lingering_—"

Jack doesn't let him finish. He finds his motion again, his need for _action_; he is leaping and whirling and there are razors in the whirlwind he flings at the Nightmare King. Pitch disappears, replaced with an echoing laugh; Jack darts out of the cage just as the door clangs shut again, trapping Anna's empty shell inside.

For a moment he is plummeting through hollow air, and he imagines letting himself fall. He isn't sure he would survive the crash landing anymore; his limbs feel limp and lifeless, his powers more so. Anna is gone, Anna who almost let him go but believed still, Anna who came to save her sister—

At the last second, Jack flips himself over and tries to hit a four-point crouch, but he lands with more force than he meant to. Dust billows out of the debris and he pulls himself back together, feeling the bruises blooming, the blood trickling down his cheek.

Pitch looms before him, wearing a biting smile that doesn't quite mask his resentment. "_That_," he says, while Jack struggles to his feet, "seems to have solved this little problem nonetheless, doesn't it? You can barely stand. How… delightful." He lifts one hand, and Jack is certain he can see the dark blots of blood on the sickly-grey skin. Lacy knots of shadow start to come together in his palm.

"How many people still believed in you? Was it… two? And now, I'm afraid… none."

"Kristoff," Jack croaks, "still—"

Pitch shrugs. The snow-laced murk in his hand forms the silhouette of Anna folding up like a trampled butterfly and Jack standing over her, letting her down. "Not after he sees _this_."

"He won't believe—he'll think it's a trick!"

"But it won't be, will it, Jack?" Pitch closes his hand over the image, crushing it. "You really did just… let her die."

Jack slams his fist into the ground, but the frost that sprouts from his touch is faint, melts quickly. Pitch's laugh weighs down on him.

"Wait 'til I—I'll tell Elsa—"

"Ooooh, a tattletale." Pitch shakes his hands on either side of his face, wide-eyed. "I'm _terrified_." He curls his fingers behind his back and turns away from Jack, who is on his feet again, but bowed over, breath coming short and heavy. "Elsa told me to remove anyone who still believed in you. She knew her sister was among that… _very small_ number."

"And you—just do what she tells you?"

"Yes," says Pitch, smiling. "I do."

He melts back into his shadow, growing over the walls, towering above Jack. "And so the mountain man is widowed," he declares, voice echoing from stone to stone. "His lovely bride—although." The shadows pause, cock their heads in unison, and Pitch reappears, crouching in front of Jack. "It seems I don't know. Were they actually married?"

Jack closes his eyes. "Engaged," he whispers. They put off their wedding until after Elsa's. And Elsa's—Elsa's never happened.

-o-

He went to see her on her wedding day. Of course he did.

He told himself he couldn't escape it, the entire castle draped in Arendelle's green-purple-gold, Weselton's gold-red-black, and swathes of white like snow-covered hills. What he really should've done was left the castle, sequestered himself in the mountain winter until the whole affair was finished. Weddings were for adults, weddings were for people who had someone else to see them; and most importantly, weddings were _boring_. He had been to few-if-any in his lonely three centuries; he wasn't going to subject himself to any of that _now_. He wasn't going to make himself sit there and watch Elsa marry someone nondescript and dull and unwanted.

He wasn't going to make himself watch Elsa marry someone who wasn't him.

The solace of mountain silence would have been no solace at all, with nothing to drown out his thoughts but his own arguments with the moon. At least it would have been a relief from white lace and flowers, every female servant struck by a constant fit of giggles, the huffy glares he got from Anna every time he walked past. He should've left, if only to play with the excited kids in town, all infected by the celebrations—anything to take him farther from this sick feeling in the pit of his stomach at the thought of Elsa at the altar. She was throwing her childhood away all over again. Neither one of them needed to get _married_—they could just run off together and have _fun_—

Except he couldn't risk where that would lead—and she would never leave her kingdom. Her responsibilities. Her _adulthood_. What happened to giving Elsa her childhood back? What happened—

"I need to get out of here," Jack muttered, scuffing his foot on the carpet. A passing servant scowled at him for the patch of frost spreading across the no doubt freshly-cleaned rug. He rolled his eyes and flipped his staff across his shoulders.

"Definitely. Anywhere but here."

But there was no way he was going to let Pitch into the castle on Elsa's wedding day. Not even if a Nightmare invasion would send the whole thing to a crashing halt and maybe—just maybe—prevent the political marriage from ever taking place. Jack couldn't leave the revelers undefended. Couldn't leave her vulnerable.

So he went to see her on her wedding day.

-o-

Jack climbed in her window so he didn't have to brave the hordes of ladies-in-waiting marching in and out of Elsa's room. He waited until she had forced them all out in an icy spray of frustration, then creaked the window open and stepped lightly inside.

Elsa was staring into a three-paneled standing mirror as if she couldn't find herself in it. Not moving—just staring. He came up behind her, appearing in the triple mirror, looking plain and careless beside her luminous confection of a dress.

"Go away, Jack," she said hollowly. She didn't even look at him.

"Hang on, I've got to see this." He stepped back, gesturing for her to turn around. "You look like your own wedding cake."

She turned stiffly; the layers of her skirt chimed like glass and rustled like spring leaves in a soft breeze. She was wearing so many ruffles and laces that he couldn't tell where the fabric ended and her ice began. Stars of frost and beaded snow draped her bodice; snowy ribbons drifted and spun in nonexistent wind; sheer silk whispered out behind her, decorated with spiky flowers of frost. A crown of crystalline crocuses, woven with iced roses, held a veil of rime over her hair, which was half braided on top of her head and half flowing in waves as pale as the winter sun.

"I'm not even sure you can move in that," he said.

"I can't," she said, eyes blank. That expression was starting to unnerve him. "Aren't you going to tell me how nice I look, like everyone else?"

"You always look nice," he said dismissively. "Today you look like a snow—"

"Queen?"

"I was gonna go for 'snowman,' but I guess yours makes more sense. It's more flattering, too."

He noticed her gloves then—gloves that he thought she would never wear again. She was clothed fingertip to elbow in frost as delicate as leaf veins and root systems, as intricate as snowflakes—hundreds of them, repeating their fractal patterns across her skin.

"Elsa, you can't really want to do this," he said suddenly. Part of him thought of grabbing her and diving out the window, letting the wind take them both to freedom. Would that be an act of true love, or just selfish desperation?

"Not all of us can live for what we want."

"Yeah, but I'm not proposing 'all of us.'"

She met his gaze for the first time, and her eyes hardened. There was something about them—it took him a moment, but he realized they were not her usual shallow-sea-cyan, but instead a cobalt like the ocean depths.

"I want to," she said. Her voice had lost its hollow ring and turned itself into something jagged, something that cut him just to hear. "He's a gentleman."

Jack eyed her, his head tilted slightly, suspicion and a glimmer of recognition narrowing his eyes. "What? A gentleman—?"

Elsa turned away, straightening her reflection, tilting her head back. He had never seen her so—queen-like, looking down on the world who would force her to marry some weasel-faced nobleman's son.

"I will be queen," she said to herself in the mirror, sunlight catching on all the sharp edges in her gown. "And I will never have to hide who I am."

"You _are_ queen," Jack said, emotion writing frost spirals onto the floor. They twirled toward Elsa, reaching for the trailing hems of her dress. "And that jerk will probably just make you hide _more_ of the time. I don't think Weasel-Town really likes your powers. C'mon, Elsa, you're wearing _gloves_. What's with that?"

A servant started knocking at the door, calling that it was time to head for the chapel. Jack's head shot up, his eyes widening. He hadn't meant to be here so long, so late, so close to the end. Elsa clenched her fists, frost crackling over her knuckles. "I want this," she said under her breath. And louder—"Go away, Jack. You had your chance."

"Anna says _this _is my last chance."

"Anna is wrong," Elsa said. "That's past." She turned toward the door, an iridescent ice track sliding along in her wake. Jack stepped forward and grabbed her arm, above the elbow—above the glove. Snowflakes sparked in the air at the touch—his or hers, he didn't know.

"Let me go," she ordered, teeth gritted, eyes empty and dark and cold.

"At least take the gloves off," he said, and to his surprise, she smiled.

"Done," she said, and the storm exploded out of her.

Jack hurtled back, crashing into the mirror. Its fragments sprayed out into the wind, cutting across his face and hands as the frame folded over him. He fought his way free, feeling the blood trickle and stop. One arm raised to shield his eyes from the whirling blades of snow, he peered into the turbulent sphere, searching for Elsa. She was nearly invisible, white in white, but he found her—and she noticed when he did. She'd been waiting for it.

Her smile curved into something wicked and she threw her arms wide. Curving icicles burst from her knuckles like talons as long as her forearms, tearing the delicate frost to tatters that dispersed in her personal wind.

"Everyone will remember this day," she said, and pivoted away.

The door exploded, gusting the crowd of servants back against the wall to a chorus of screams. Elsa stalked out it, hands thrown wide, storm following her like a lost puppy who couldn't sleep. Jack slipped to his feet and skidded after her, avoiding stepping on her ice trail, which was veined with black as if it had been poisoned.

"Elsa!"

Her icicle-claws extended to the walls, drawing deep gouges in the paint. A curving barricade of spikes leapt up before her, preceding her down the hall, menacing anyone who didn't get out of her way fast enough. Doors broke beneath the wrath of the marching storm. Ice left raw scars in walls and floor.

Jack threw himself after her, but her miniature blizzard absorbed every bolt of ice he flung for her attention. IT was as if she had forgotten him, a mayfly to her winter: unnoticeable, soon dying.

"_Elsa!_"

He followed her destruction all the way to the chapel. Wedding guests not important enough to be inside and milling servants fled before the two of them. Dignitaries howled in rage; maids and manservants simply cowered, disbelieving, having come so close to trusting their queen again only to see it all torn down.

The gilded chapel doors slammed open, cracking with the force and hanging lopsided on their hinges. The entire crowed lunged to its feet in one collective gasp, most of the spectators proceeding to topple over or climb on top of each other in their hurry to escape.

Multi-hued light cascaded through the stained glass windows to color Elsa's pale fury in scarlet and sapphire. Fields of flower arrangements froze over. Anna had appeared, holding her skirts high to avoid tripping as she, like Jack, ran toward Elsa. At the altar, the Duke of Weselton's son stood, gape-jawed, at his intended bride.

His presence was forgotten Pitch rose out of the shadows at his feet.

Jack shouted, a wordless cry of rage and anguish and _failure_; Pitch smiled superciliously at him, hands folded calmly behind his back. Elsa stormed up the aisle toward him, through the chaos, through the snow, through Jack's echoing thoughts of _I _failed, _I screwed up again_.

"My queen," said Pitch, holding out his hand.

Elsa looked back at Jack. And then she took it.

Her wedding dress shattered, ten thousand fragments of ice and innocence falling away to leave her clothed in frost and shadow. Winter night clung to her like a lover. Her veil tattered and blackened. Her hands were bare.

"My king," she said, holding Jack's eyes, and the Snow Queen and the Nightmare King merged into darkness, taking all the sunlight with them.


	22. Your Own Gravestone

A/N: Are you telling me that _nobody_ had opinions on yesterday's chapter? _NOBODY? _I clearly am not doing my job here. :1

If anybody wants a visual aid for Elsa's new dress, check it out, I drew one! sycamoresea-dot-deviantart-dot-com/art/Queen-of-Cold-and-Dark-494447699

22 (Your Own Gravestone)

"—easy, it's easy," he remembers Anna saying, through a haze of his own shock, past and present disbelief mingling into an intoxicating cocktail of nausea. "No, guys, don't worry. She went to the North Mountain again, I know it. I'll just pop out"—she rounded on Jack, who didn't blink, or acknowledge her at all—"and _you_, mister, are coming with me, and we'll just get some true love-y acts going again and it'll be great. There'll be _sun_ again and, well, it'll probably still be winter because it _is_ winter, but at some point it'll go away—"

He thought she kept talking, but he wasn't listening, he wasn't _moving_. All the breath was gone from his body; he was one of his own ice sculptures, staring at the place where Elsa had held his gaze and said _this is your fault_ with her eyes.

"How?" he croaked, hardly aware he was speaking out loud. How had he missed this? He had been here for months to stop just this. He had crouched in the shadows of the old king's and queen's bedroom, he had hidden in the rafters—some nights he had sprawled beneath Elsa's bed, hoping she didn't notice, matching his breathing to hers, his frost spirals to hers, his dreams to hers. Pitch could not have been there, occupying the same space. Had it been the nights he threw the snow-globe down the halls and tried too hard to leave? Had he just been too preoccupied with doing his job to… do this job?

_We are very busy bringing joy to children! We don't have time… for children._

Jack wanted to fold in on himself. He was becoming one of _them_, a Guardian who forgot his purpose in the pursuit of his purpose. An _adult_.

He needed to take things a little less seriously.

Before he thought it through, before he thought at all, Jack pivoted and was gone. He swung himself up a pillar and into the balcony, scattering the choir that had bravely stuck out the chaos. The end of his staff cracked the panes from the windows and he vanished through them, groping in his pocket for the snow-globe as he tumbled into the winter night.

"Jack! Jack Frost, get back here!"

Because of her voice, he thought of Anna right as he lunged through the portal, and it was the only thing that saved her—falling free in the blizzard with snow for teeth, the blizzard that felt like Elsa and tasted like ashes and fear. They were both lucky: the snow-globe brought him forward and he carried her back, leaving her with a frantic Kristoff, with someone who didn't mind the warmth of true love. With someone who could _feel_ that warmth.

And then he went back to the North Pole, so intently focused on being _home_, on being _away_ from his failure as a Guardian, that he finally fell free in Santa's Workshop, where the Guardians of Childhood prepared for war

Against his failure as a Guardian.

-o-

Jack is on his knees, and he hates it. He grits his teeth, but he cannot stand; he tightens his fingers against the stone beneath him, but he is powerless. The memories of saving Anna bear down on him almost as strongly as the memories of failing Elsa, taunting him, waving in front of him what he has lost. Pitch's laugh is a physical blow.

"Well," says the Nightmare King from his shadow theater, "now I'm not the least bit worried." The shadows shrink, disappearing as his voice fades into the darkness at the center of the earth. "If you'll excuse me, I have a Nightmare to send. But never fear, Jack—" A flash in the darkness, a highlighted grin. "I'll see you soon. I'm going to enjoy watching Elsa kill you after all."

He is gone, and Jack is alone in his ruined lair with Anna's body.

He tries to go back. Furious, he yanks the snow-globe from his pocket and sends himself back, determined to save her. But he can't—he can't stop Pitch, can't stop Pitch's spectral blade, even when he knows it's coming. He keeps going back, even tries refusing Pitch's offer, and Pitch kills Anna for his defiance. Every time, he ends up back here, on his knees.

He wants to curl up and quit. He worked so hard to get here without losing himself or his power, and now maybe he has neither. And he still has to stand up and face Elsa.

So he stands up and goes to face Elsa.

First he hauls himself up a stone column, leaping from the wall to the hanging cages, almost missing, falling again. His fingers weave into the harsh-edged scrollwork, and he pushes himself to the next, until he crouches against the side of Anna's prison once more. She is still inside, the blood on her back already rusted to brown. He cannot get her out.

He tries, slamming his staff over and over into the bars, blasting frost across the metal, but Pitch built his prisons too strongly, and Elsa reinforced them with ice. In the end, Jack presses himself to the bars and reaches as far as he can inside, just to brush a lace flower across Anna's hair. For months, she has been his best friend, even as she berated him for his idiocy in relation to Elsa. Perhaps _because_ she berated him, because she was never afraid to be honest with him.

Jack leans his forehead against the chill metal, whispering an icy wind across Anna's body, encasing her in frost.

Then he sends himself soaring upward. Because there's still one person who believes in him.

Even if she doesn't know it. He does. He does, because he can still fly, and there is still ice at his fingertips.

-o-

The castle welcomes him home like an old friend, throwing its doors wide as he climbs the crooked staircase to the entrance. Elsa isn't waiting for him in the foyer, but he knows where she will be. He climbs the staircase slowly, conserving his strength, though he feels that he should be running, jumping, filling this place with laughter. He can't remember the last time he laughed now. He can't remember the last time _Elsa_ laughed.

That's his fault.

The glass walls echo with his footsteps, a lonely reminder of what he has lost. He isn't silent now. He isn't invisible. But he gave that up.

"Jack," he says, "you're an idiot. Will you stop _moping_ and get on with it?"

He rolls his eyes at himself and musters a smile and takes the steps two at a time. "I could still go home," he says, but he doesn't mean it. He's just filling the empty space. He's just conserving his strength.

-o-

Jack bursts into the room and flings himself into a roll, sliding across the floor, swinging himself around, and immediately darting up a wall. He laughs as thorns of ice hurtle out of the ground in all the places he touched, lunging too late to catch him as he scurries up Elsa's archways. The walls are no longer the smooth glass he admired so greatly so many months ago; instead they are studded with cold black spears. They burn to the touch and drip a viscous liquid like congealing blood, but they make it easier to scale the glossy partitions. He perches on top of a cluster of the sickly icicles that jut out into the room, pretending it does not sear his bare feet to stand there, and looks down at Elsa.

"Hey," he says. "Missed you."

She tilts her head up at him and smiles.

He doesn't have time to take her in—just a flash of violet and silver and black and then he is diving to the side, a blast of her snowy magic barreling straight for him. The flurry of white doesn't have quite the same fractal sheen he is used to; it is tainted by a lopsided wobble, the scent of the night. The icicles he was standing on explode, raining him with thick black acid; one-handed, he grabs for another icicle spear and swings himself onto it, twisting his staff around in the same motion. Glacial-blue lightning crackles outward; she sweeps her hand upward and cuts it off in one smooth crystal barrier. Something swings and chimes at her wrist; something flutters at her shoulders; he can't quite catch a glimpse.

"Hang on, I've got to see this!" he calls out, and launches himself over her, landing just behind her as she whirls.

"You look like your own gravestone," he says, and gives her a dry smile.

She returns it with interest and takes a step back, spreading her arms to show off her dress. It is similar to the one she made for herself the first time he found her in this castle, cut to her shape and slinking to the floor, but the skirt is a little fuller, a little longer. Her sleeves cross her collarbones and bare her shoulders, hanging in tatters over her triceps. A warped and twisted half a snowflake rises from her hem in sickly black, matching the poison that eats up the ends of her hair—which is escaping its braid in wild spikes—turning it from silver to ebony like a slow disease. The fractal edge of her bodice hangs in jagged snowflake-points, belted with root-like frost. Sharp-edged curls of black metal hang at her throat and wrists, dangling teardrop-crystals of black on frosted chains.

Her translucent cape, which trails across the ground, is the only part of her new ensemble not wrought in a gradient of violet or silver or black. It is, instead, cloudy blue, and the patterns of frost that cover it are the same as Jack has always made.

He grins at her, bowing in mock thanks. "The crown's a bit much," he says.

"The crown," she says, cupping razor-sharp stars in her palm, "is the best part."

He flips backwards out of the way, skating across the floor around a spiraling array of glacial spikes. The fractal crown must be nearly as tall as her head is, jagged and sharp as the teeth on the monster beneath your bed, patterned with frost inside an empty white frame. It juts down across her forehead, jabbing between her eyes. It looks heavy. It looks harsh.

"I'm the _queen_," she cries, hands weaving together to bring a white whirlwind rising from the ground. "And no one will ever forget it!"

"Not with that trinket, no." He dives sideways as the whirlwind throws itself at him; he swears he can see teeth gnashing in the miniature storm, veined with black. "But I think they would've remembered anyway."

The end of his staff crashes into the ground, sending a whorl of frost spinning toward Elsa. She scoffs at it, stomping her foot onto the lacy patterns, but it rises out of the floor to curl around her ankle. While she's distracted, Jack runs forward, tumbling over the icicle scars, and swings his staff directly at her. She doesn't even have to look up to block it with a transparent shield streaking across her body like a brushstroke, but she turns her eyes on him anyway—and, pressed nearly up against her, he sees that they are a night-sky violet, with shadows moving in their depths.

Her free hand thrusts toward his stomach and he flips backward, narrowly avoiding the blade in her hand that dissolves in a glitter of silvery dust. "I guess I have to ask you if you want to come home," he says, though he really can't afford to not concentrate on the fight. Black maws in the floor occasionally open up where he lands, hoping to swallow him, or at least catch an ankle and hold him still—but Jack is not accustomed to being still.

"I _am_ home, Jack."

"Have to ask." He shrugs, jumping back to the wall. His feet blister and sting where he keeps landing on the sick black ice. The whole ceiling above him is hung with stalactites of the same substance—except for the chandelier, a shining confection of aquamarine and ivory, ragged snowflake upon ragged snowflake twisting outward to hold candles of ebony wax whose flames flicker an eerie blue.

"I'm a Guardian, after all. And we're all… noble."

"_Noble!"_ She shrieks with laughter. Though the sound gives him chills—it is _nothing_ like Elsa, more like the banshee in the dark—he laughs along with her, as though they're sharing a joke, the way they always did. It clearly annoys her; the sound cuts off abruptly, and he is left laughing alone.

He hears it again in the space between them: _What d'you want all this romance stuff for? I thought you didn't _need_ some prince to make your life easier!_

_You're not a prince, Jack. And you're certainly not making my life any easier. _Her words were as hard as the winter earth, until she put her head down in her hands and whispered, _And I don't _need_ you. _

"Yeah," he says. "I'm not much of a role model."

He launches himself over her head; she spins to follow him, a streak of snow arcing with her hands. He cracks his staff into the ground, serrated sculptures sprouting at its touch; Elsa thrusts her hands toward him, throwing the buffeting wind. He swings up onto the crook of his staff while she stumbles away from the bite of his ice, but the blow sends staff and all tumbling backwards. Jack hits the doors to the balcony, his staff clattering away from him. Elsa's lips turn up into a cruel smile, and she steps forward, sweeping her hands toward him once again. The door blast open in a sharp gust of wind, just as Jack regains his feet; he grabs for the frame, but it slips from his grasp and somersaults backwards across the balcony over the abyss.

"What did you come here for, Jack?" she wants to know, advancing on him as he scrabbles for the staff that has come rolling after him. "Did you come to kill me?"

His fingers close around the worn white wood, and he looks up at her and finds he does not know the answer.

The moment of hesitation is enough that, even as he wields his staff in a vast arc of ice that crackles toward her, she is already knotting more brumal wind to toss him towards the rail. He tries to call the snowflakes out of her grip, rebounding them on her, but her control is so much tighter now—and while he is distracted, the flurry catches him in the gut.

Gasping, he jumps straight up, barely avoiding another blast, brandishing his staff in a burst of glacier blue. "What about you?" he shouts over the howl of winter wind rising to meet his attack. "Gonna kill me, Elsa?"

The wind dies and Jack lands in a crouch, staff angled toward her. He looks up at her through his bangs, meeting her iced-over eyes and her cold knifelike smile.

"Yes," she says, with quiet relish. "I'm going to look you in the eye when I cut your throat."

"Wow, you've really gone over the deep end, huh?"

The sudden barrage of icicles sends him skidding into the railing and over the edge.

"This is a little less personal than throat-cutting!" he shouts, hand curled over a jutting shard of shadow and frost. The chasm to the center of the earth yawns beneath him, hungry, patient—and as slow as his reflexes, which let him be caught in that blast, have become; as wobbly as his flight, as shaky as his control, he doesn't know what will happen if he falls into its gaping jaws. He still isn't sure he will die, but he doesn't think he will ever get out, either.

Elsa kneels down above him, something glittering in her hand, a reflection of the shadow that took Anna's smile. "Pitch," says Jack wildly, swinging over the black mouth of the mountain. "Pitch killed Anna."

Elsa barely flinches. Her smile might freeze in place, brittle as the ice across the pond—but only because he knows her so well. "I know," she says. Her voice doesn't tremble, unless he listens hard enough. "He said you did it."

"And you just _believed_ him?" Jack yells, thrashing precariously, trying to pull himself back up the railing. "Why would I—I couldn't hurt Anna!"

"Why not, Jack? You hurt me."

She leans over him, close enough to kiss, if he could just reach up and pull her down to him—but his grip is tenuous enough already. "You've really become cold, Elsa," he says, no longer struggling, hanging calmly over the wide empty night.

"But I'm happy, Jack. Isn't that what you wanted for me? No, wait," she whispers, raising her hand clenched around a scintillant blade, her own blood dripping from the edges she holds too tightly. "You only cared about your own."

"Elsa," he says softly, looking up at the knife instead of her, feeling like he can't breathe, feeling like all his veins are shattering at the accusation—and all the more because it's true.

"Oh? Last words?"

"Yeah," Jack says, as the blade lashes down. "I can fly."

And he lets go.


	23. Mea Culpa

A/N: Thank you, beautiful reviewers. ;-; You make my day every time. In my gratitude, please enjoy Elsa being beautiful and strong and also evil.

23 (Mea Culpa)

Jack does a back flip and drops, waving merrily as Elsa retreats in his vision. She jerks to her feet above him, firing razorblades of snowflakes down after him. He reverses and hooks his arm around one of the colossal icicles cascading all the way to the mountain slope. A grin splits his face as he slides, letting go just over the massive double doors and dropping into a crouch on the threshold. The doors are still open; Jack rises, flicking his staff up to his hand with his foot; then he pivots, and ducks inside in time to see Elsa sweeping down the stairs, trailing snow that writhes like shadow in the wake of her slithering cape. Jack leans himself against the doorframe, raising his eyebrows up at her.

"You forgot that bit, didn't you?" he asks, grinning, then throws himself to the side as a bolt ripped from a glacier comes hurtling toward him. The doorframe cracks, half the lintel toppling sideways and crashing to the ground.

"Where is Pitch, anyway?" he calls, rolling back to his feet and swinging his staff. Jagged frosted stars hurtle toward Elsa; she reaches out her hand, twisting her wrist upwards, and the snowflakes stop to hover in her grip.

"Leading an army of Nightmares to Weselton," she says smugly, "and another to the Southern Isles."

"Wow, he can be in three places at once?" He strolls toward her, twirling his staff. "Color me impressed."

Elsa looks at him askance. "Three?"

"He told me he was gonna be here. He wanted to watch you kill me or something." Jack cocks his eyebrows over half a grin. Elsa looks stonily down at him, then lets herself laugh.

"_Watch_? You think I'd let him be here, for this?" She raises her hands and flings Jack's frost back at him. He ducks, and a hiemal gust punches him from behind. He hits his knees, somersaults, and pulls himself back up, wincing.

"Ah," he says, a little breathless, "I'm one of _those _guys."

"Yes," says Elsa, idling at the top of the main staircase, examining the ice at her fingertips. She doesn't even have to look to encircle his ankles with silvery manacles. Jack rolls his eyes and slams the end of his staff against the ice, cracking it and stepping free.

"Last chance, Jack," Elsa says.

Jack laughs, because the last time he had a _last chance_, it also wasn't any sort of choice at all.

"Last chance, Jack," Anna said, reaching out and snagging his sleeve. She looked hopefully up at him for a moment, then looked down at his sweatshirt sleeve in consternation.

"Um. Why aren't you dressed? I mean obviously you're dressed. You're wearing clothes. But they're not, you know, _nice clothes_. Like wedding clothes. You're not wearing wedding clothes."

"I'm not going," he said. "Last chance for what?"

"You're not going!" she shrieked. "How can you not go?"

"Oh come on," said Jack, shouldering his staff and spreading his other arm as if to say, _Look at me_. "Like I want to sit in some boring ceremony listening to vows for, what, six hours. No thanks." He flipped his staff to his other hand and made a dismissive gesture, one corner of his mouth turned up in a dry smile. "'Sides. She didn't even ask me to be her best man. Last chance for what?"

"Of course she didn't ask you to be the best man!" Anna folded her arms with so much attitude it might have been a second person standing there. "She asked you to be the _groom_!"

"Well," said Jack, sliding his staff across his shoulders, "yeah, I guess she did. So it's my last chance to—"

"_Marry my sister, dammit_!"

"Anna! Language! There are kids here," he said, grinning. She looked ostentatiously around the empty hallway.

"Yes there are," she said primly. "_You_." She stalked off, the azure skirts of her bridesmaid dress swishing behind her.

"I'm pretty sure the day of the wedding isn't my last chance," he called after her, as if the idea of seeing Elsa on someone else's arm didn't cut his heart six different ways. "I'm pretty sure it's too late for that."

"It's never too late for true love, Jack Frost," Anna snapped, and stomped around a corner with the last word.

"Last chance for what, Elsa?" Jack says now, twirling his staff from one hand to the other and slinging it across both shoulders. Wrists hooked over it, he starts walking, while she stands still before him, sculpted out of ice and shadow and shimmering night.

"Pitch offered it to you once before," says Elsa. "Or he will." She smiles a little, but the expression has an edge to it, a hard glint like the icicle knife folded in her hands.

"Oh," says Jack, nodding. "That. 'What goes together better than cold and dark?'" He echoes the words as if they mean nothing, as if they are not carved into his memory, as if the inflection of each syllable is not seared into him. He can hear Pitch saying it, over and over—_What goes together _better_ than _cold_ and _dark_?—_like it's some eerie song he can't ever get out of his head. "But I'm pretty sure you already filled that position."

She finally moves, descending the grand staircase with her frosted hems trailing behind her like seafoam in the moonlight. Her hands stay folded together, and he can't tell if she's trying to hide the dagger from him or not. He thinks not, because they both know it's not, ultimately, how this is going to end. He may be a ghost of himself, he may feel bruised and worn about the edges, he may be _still bleeding_—but he isn't going to stand still for a knife fight, and he isn't going to succumb to a blade.

That just wouldn't be any fun.

So he bows to her, as she approaches him, and leaps upward. He lands in a fork of a fractal archway, obsidian flaws shifting and warping beneath the glassy surface. Elsa whirls to face him, her cape twisting around her, her hands falling to fists at her sides—one still clutching the dagger, the other dripping broken snowflakes.

"There's still heat left in the world, Jack! A little extra cold in the dark wouldn't get in our way."

"Oh," Jack calls down, grinning, "that's your offer? That I wouldn't get in your way? Very persuasive." He stands up, balancing on the curve of the arched pillars. One arm out for stability, the other clinging to the staff he so recently regained—and cannot imagine letting go of ever again—he strolls up the arc toward a ceiling that drips black icicles as thick as stalactites. Elsa follows him on the staircase, skirts fluttering behind her like shadows in candlelight.

"We could have winter all the time!" she says. "_Everywhere_! No more of Mother Nature's rules. No one to tell us what to do—"

"Hold on," Jack interrupts, crouching to peer down at her. "You're the queen, aren't you?"

She looks like she knows he has a hidden agenda behind the question, but she answers anyway. "Yes."

"And Pitch, you let him be king. You know, Nightmare King and all."

"Yes."

"Well," says Jack, standing up again, "unless you're going to make me Emperor of Winter or something, it sounds like you're still going to be telling me what to do."

"Jack," says Elsa, standing right below him, and the way she tilts her head back makes her eyes go wide, makes her look vulnerable. "You really could join us. Everything would be so much easier. No rules. No _summer_. Just—fun."

For one vivid moment, Jack imagines saying yes. He has always loved the idea of eternal winter, where he would be forever in his element. And he can see himself: his hair—like hers—shading to black, his eyes gone to ink, his frost white veins in jagged onyx flowers. Their world is covered in ice, there is no one who cannot see them—and the thing between them is too bitter and dark to be called _true love_, and he can kiss her without fear of being made weak.

But he supposes that half the fun of a snow day is the surprise.

Jack smiles dryly and jumps, landing right in front of her, close enough to hold. "Sorry," he says, "I don't think I'm that kind of monster."

The hand with the icicle knife slashes out, but he's expecting it and leaps away, the tip of the dagger catching only a few threads of his sleeve. Jack laughs, which infuriates her, although she should be anticipating it. Glacial spears with shadows running beneath their surfaces shoot from the ground in front of him, but when he jumps back, he finds they have also grown behind him. Jack stumbles, and his hoodie fails him for the first time; the spearheads drink hungrily at his cold blood, leaving ragged holes in his sweatshirt.

Jack presses his hand to his side, pulls it away red. He shakes his fingers, and the blood spatters to the ground, sinking into the floor to spiral into carmine constellations beneath the icy veneer. His eyes feel bruised, like he has been awake too long. His thoughts muddle. His muscles ache. He is bleeding.

"Your first mistake," he says, "was believing in me."

Elsa lets out a laugh like the cry of a hunting hawk. "_Believe_ in you!" she says, sweeping her hand up to call the black-crystal spears towards her. Caught between the two barriers, Jack hops straight up, perching on the slope of one dark palisade. The ice burns his bare feet, but he pretends not to notice. "I don't _believe_ in you!"

"You can still see me, can't you?" he says, and grins.

She snarls, and the black stalactites tremble and crack. A cascade of stygian blades bombard him from the shattering ceiling; Jack's eyes widen and he throws his arms over himself, staff over his head like an umbrella. A swirl of snow surrounds him, hardening over him, thin as an eggshell, quaking beneath the barrage but not rupturing. It disintegrates as the icicles peter off, and Jack gasps. He rolls himself off onto a mound of fragmented crystal and stands up, pointing his staff at Elsa.

"You always knew I would come back," he says. "You're the only one. You _always_ waited for me. That sounds like belief if I ever heard it. And it was strong enough to get me here."

He isn't quick enough to get an attack off before her snowball takes him in the gut. He flies backwards; the rows of inked icicles crack, their fragmented ends slashing deep into his back.

"But it won't be enough to keep you alive."

The sound of her voice is the hope going out of her, that one last moment where she thought she could make him join her. Where she still thought they could be together. Jack shuts his eyes at the pain of it, that echo of the last child letting go of her belief. He was supposed to give Elsa her childhood back, but all he did was take it away again.

His fault.

"Oh, _Jack_," Elsa says, sauntering forward to stand over him. He struggles to rise, the pain striking through him, wintry blood curling down his shoulder blades. Her rage has settled back into an expression of wicked conceit, dark eyes aloof, lips curving upward like a scythe. "You're right. We would never have worked out." She puts one bare foot on his chest and leans; he is too weak to resist, and finds himself flat again on the debris-strewn floor. "They all said it, you know. The whole kingdom, watching us and saying we were only ever meant to be friends."

"They didn't _all_ say it." He reaches out for his staff, a few feet away across sharp black rubble. "Some of them said we were made for each other." He can't quite reach, his fingers scrabbling across fragments of glass.

"Because of our ice powers?" She twirls a demonstrative storm between her fingertips. "Ice does not a match make, Jack. We were never alike enough."

"Opposites attract, and all that?" he hazards. He finally gets his hands around his staff and with a weak, wordless yell, swings it toward Elsa. She gives it an _oh-please_ look and pivots, stepping down on his arm. The hem of her skirt scratches glassily across his chest, her frost-patterned cape drifting across his face, picking up threads of blood. The pressure on his muscles forces his hand back open, his staff rolling away. Elsa laughs and sashays backwards, spreading her arms wide. Jack rolls over, rubbing his head.

"Are you attracted to me, Jack?" she asks. He looks up at her with a small, incredulous smile.

"I _dare_ you to find a seventeen-year-old boy who would say no to that question."

"But you're not seventeen. You're _three hundred_ and seventeen." She quirks her eyebrows and cocks her hip against the nautilus-shell that caps the banister of her grand staircase. He thinks she must believe him defeated; she's not even attacking. And he, looking down at his hands, thinks she must be right. He hardly has a snowflake left within him. Where are his Easter Sunday blizzards, his weekly Burgess snow days? Why did he ever accept a Guardian's burden? Once, he could do all this without belief. Now he's a snowball crushed under a carless heel, just because he took some vow, just because he wanted somebody to see him. Was invisible and strong so agonizing? Was visible and powerless any better?

"Did you miss the part where I'm _stuck_?" he says to her, wrapping shaking fingers around his staff once more. It barely flares with frost, but the grooves of it are comforting against his thumb. He rubs them absently, looking up at her with something that doesn't look like a smile. "I'm not immortal, I'm just frozen. I'll never learn. I'm never going to grow up."

"Neither am I, Jack."

"…Wait, what?" The echo of Anna on his lips burns, and he bites his tongue, leaning heavily on his staff as he tilts his head up at her.

"Not anymore. I know you were worried about that, once. In those moments you weren't just worried about yourself." She pursed her lips smugly and whirled herself up to stand on the spiraling banister-post. "Are you still worried about it? Is that what's holding you back? Don't. It shouldn't." It's curious, but it's like she's still offering him a chance to stand beside her, even though she doesn't believe he will. He smiles humorlessly, a lump in his throat, wishing he could have let her believe.

"There's no blood running in my veins, Jack," she cries, pirouetting, her skirts whirling out around her like their own hibernal hurricane. Jack can't take his eyes off her, even as he rubs his fingertips together, summoning tiny flakes of snow. "Just ice! And my heart isn't beating, it's _frozen_."

"I'm gonna have to question the medical plausibility of that."

"Says the drowned boy flying."

"Good point." Jack takes a few steps forward, using his staff for support. He feels so old. Old Man Winter. This is not who he should be. He cannot muster the energy to be anyone else. "Elsa, c'mon! You just put yourself back in the cage."

She drops her arms, stiff as a porcelain doll atop the pedestal. She doesn't have to even move to send him tumbling back into a fabricated snowdrift. He pops out of it with powdered sugar frosting his silver hair.

"You froze your heart?" he says, rubbing his head. "On purpose? You undid everything Anna gave up for you!"

"_You _undid it," she says harshly. Steps form out of the fratals in the air; she descends the diminutive staircase from the banister post, and it dissolves behind her into a manic flurry. "If you had just—"

"Yeah, I know," he says, bending down to scoop up a handful of snow and grab his staff again. "I know, alright? My fault. If I had just." He looks down at the snowball he is shaping into a perfect sphere, tiny motions of his fingers smoothing out the powdery edges.

"And here you are again, Elsa." He looks up at her, smiling wryly, snowball cradled in one hand, hanging forward on his staff with the other. "The perfect queen, just like your parents made you."

She quirks an eyebrow. "Perfect, Jack?"

"Yeah. Keep it up." He tosses the snowball lightly in the air, catches it. "Just keep watching everybody die like you don't care. The kids—"

Her brow furrows suddenly. "The children are _safe_," she hisses, surprising him. "Kristoff made sure of that. He thinks he's working against me." Her lip curls. "But this is _my_ kingdom."

Jack stares, but recovers quickly, remembering tiny cold hands, fingers curled like dry autumn leaves. "What about Alva?" he says. "What about Embla? _What about Anna_?"

The snowball in his hand explodes, showering him with silver shards that draw fresh blood from his cut and scarred face. He doesn't think today's wounds will ever heal—he isn't sure he wants them to.

"I _am_ the perfect queen!" Elsa shouts, lifting her hands. The wind rises with her, howling hungry fragments from the snow. "_Everyone_ fears me! No one dares attack Arendelle! Prince Hans rots in jail, a reminder to the cowering Southern Isles of what it costs to cross me. My _betrothed_"—the words drips with an acid as thick as that on her poisonous black icicles—"huddles behind Weselton's borders, lamenting the insult to him like an impotent weasel." She is advancing on Jack as she talks, drawing up a rising veil of writhing white in her wake. "_My_ armies move on them both, and the King of Nightmares leads them at _my command_." She towers over him, the violet shading in her dress darkening to a raven's-wing shimmer all the way down to her opalescent hem. The obsidian edge to her hair twists up the thick cornsilk strands, streaking her braid all the way to her bangs.

"And I am protecting the children of Arendelle," she says. Jack looks up at her with a crooked grin he doesn't believe in.

"Getting a little emotional there, Elsa," he says, taunting her. "Better get that under control. Conceal, don't feel."

Her hands stretch toward the ceiling, the tsunami of a storm seeking the sky at her command. "I _don't_ feel," she says.

Jack's smile wavers. "I know," he says. His hands are shaking, but this is what he has come all this way for, this is what he has put off for months—centuries—this is what scares him the most.

"I know you don't," he says once more, while the jagged shadows of stalactite glass tremble and curdle at the edges of Elsa's waiting storm. "But I do, Elsa. And, Elsa?" He smiles wryly, swallowing the sick terror in his throat, the raw memories of being silent and invisible and _powerless_, drowning in the night. _I can still leave, I don't have to say it, I could just go—_

"I lo—"

"_NO!"_

In an instant of comprehension, her fury drives the storm crashing down over him, ripping away his breath and forcing the words back down. He yelps mid-sentence and fights for air, for some thread of influence on the snow around him, but it is all under Elsa's reign. Fragments of fractal glass fill his lungs, sting his eyes.

When the deluge finally stops, Elsa is hunched over, arms arced around herself, breathing heavily—and for a moment, Jack sees fear fluttering in her gaze. His fingers are numb, but he has not let go of his staff; he raises it as if he has any strength left and opens his mouth again.

With a gesture, Elsa knocks him flying, then dips her body and draws herself back up, the same motion that raised her palace on a summer mountainside. The floor ripples and distorts, coalescing into gnashing jaws, a humped back, serrated spikes, a lashing tail. It looks like a cross between a wolf and a dragon, hewn from faceted ice.

"Alright," Jack mutters, allowing himself a small smile as he climbs once again to his feet and aims the crook of his staff at the creature snarling like a landslide between him and Elsa. Its grating roar is loud enough to drown out anything he has to say to the queen ascending her grand staircase. She conjures herself a nacreous throne, branching dendrites jagging into the air above her garish crown. Shadow nebulae drift and turn beneath its lucid surface; the stylized crocus that symbolizes Arendelle is superimposed on a twelve-pointed runic snowflake on the back. Elsa drapes herself across it, propping her chin on her fist, her elbow on a hard crystal, and settles in for the amphitheatric below.

Jack looks up at her, past the adamantine creature before him, and his lips turn up into a smirk. "We'll do this the fun way."


	24. Let's Have a Little Fun

A/N: Happy Thanksgiving, to my readers in America! I'm of course grateful for all my readers and reviewers. C: I wish I could answer you all personally with hugs and hearts, but we shall have to settle for my gratitude portrayed at the top of this page! I look forward to your reviews every day. c:

24 (Let's Have a Little Fun)

Jack fires a feeble ray of frost at the creature. It splashes against the beast's side like wind chimes falling; the wolf-dragon hybrid does not appear to even notice. It continues to growl as if trying to bring down the mountain with its resonance, clearly determined to keep Jack from saying what he needs to say to Elsa.

And then it attacks.

It's like having the whole mountain bearing down on him; Jack dives out of the way, but only just. His staff swings up toward its underside with the momentum of his roll; the wood rebounds without even cracking the hulking ice beast. Jack shrugs, somersaulting to his feet. He didn't really expect anything else—fighting a creature of winter with winter itself is rarely effective. That's probably why Elsa took a new route: attacking a creature of winter with very large teeth.

Jack glances back at her, winking, and leaps straight up to flip himself onto the thing's back.

He crouches just behind its hunched shoulder-blades while it roars and twists, then bucks him off. It doesn't matter much—he doesn't intend to fight it. He dances back into the air and stumbles on his landing, then ducks outside.

The beast opens its massive jaws and blasts a snowstorm after him.

"Okay, was _not_ expecting that," Jack says, throwing himself into a snowdrift. The creature's snow-breath hurtles past him, freezing the ends of his hair out into wild spikes. He crunches his hand through them, then reaches down to scoop up a snowball.

Unfortunately, the snowdrift resolves itself into another lumbering beast. It grabs Jack with one spike-taloned hand, dangles him in front of its jagged teeth, and bellows in his face.

_Your snowman _roars?

"Marshmallow," he says. It flings him back into the castle; he goes skidding through shattered icicles, swirls of shadow and blood that have sunk into the floor to whorl like galaxies beneath the ice. "Ow," he says, and rolls over to find the wolf-dragon looming over him again.

"If the other guy's Marshmallow, you must be Ice Cube." Jack jabs the end of his staff up into the beast's jaw, snapping it shut with a sound of someone breaking off an icicle that's as tall as he is. It responds by slamming its solid chin down toward him; he scrambles backwards, barely avoiding the brutal pulverization of every single bone in his body. "That's not nice," he says, and scrapes up a handful of blackened ice fragments to form into a dark sphere in his hand. They're not quite as good as snow, that perfect combination of powder and ice, but they'll make a more vicious weapon indeed. He breathes over the uneven globe in his palm; it shines a blue so pale it might as well be grey, might as well be a ghost, but it solidifies. Jack flings the irregular sphere of ice at the creature; it cracks against its head, sending a spiderweb fracture zigzagging through its glossy eye. Tenebrous veins run deep beneath the surface of the crack, as if seeking the creature's ice cube brain.

At the top of the stairs, Elsa gestures; the veins melt and expand, until a caliginous nebula convolutes in the depths of the beast's hard head. The cracks seal themselves up over it.

Jack rolls his eyes. "Someone's not fighting fair," he says, pointing his staff at the creature but looking at Elsa where she lounges on her distant throne. The beast crashes its jaws together—Jack swings his staff out of the way, knowing it would snap like a toothpick—and charges, wispy snow trailing from its teeth like ivory smoke. Smoke—what he needs is fire.

"If only the Man in the Moon had given me fire ma—ah, who am I kidding, that wouldn't be half so fun as _this_!" Jack flicks flowers of frost across the creature's face, then shakes his head, flips himself over its muzzle, and springboards off its back. His momentum doesn't carry him quite as far as he wants; he lands on the fountain, a frozen spray of twisting tendrils in ribbons of aqua and violet and pearl, all running down to black. It starts to crackle to life when he touches it; making a surprised sound, he jumps free, looping over Elsa to hang from one of the crystalline struts arcing up to the ceiling. He grins at her; she frowns, but doesn't move from her throne.

"If you want this to be any fun, you've gotta have a little _maneuverability_," Jack says, cartwheeling up the beam at an impossible angle. He laughs, the sound echoing faintly off the vaulted glass, and then drops onto the narrow stair running back up to the room where they started this fight.

He looks back, once: Elsa stands up, staring after him, and gestures sharply. Her draconic ice wolf rears back and fractal wings build themselves out of its back, snowflake after snowflake piecing themselves together to make lace-like structures that should never be able to fly. They extend halfway to the walls, and with another quick motion from Elsa, the beast is barreling towards him at airspeeds no creature of such size and improbable wing structure should be ever be able to reach.

Jack makes a surprised sound, turns around, and runs faster.

He skates into the chandelier room and whirls around in time for the creature to go crashing through the archway, sending globules of thick shattered ice showering across the room. Jack ducks, throwing up an arm; the fragmenting shadows burn new holes in his hoodie's sleeve, tasting the skin beneath with burning tongues. He grimaces and retreats, gesturing with his staff; weak whirls of the dark ice twist around the creature's legs, nipping tiny cracks across its supports while the walls tremble, protesting the damage to their structural integrity from an inconsiderate ice monster. Said monster lunges for Jack with a speed it did not previously possess. He yells something like "woah woah _woah_!" and plunges sideways, hoping the creature's impetus will drive it to impale itself on the jutting icicles studding the walls. No such luck: its newfound speed comes with reflexes to match, and it pivots with alarming alacrity to discharge its blizzard-breath at him. He doesn't manage to avoid it this time, caught in a howl of cold and uncontrollable shivering. He grits his teeth as his fingertips go numb, tiny icicles making claws of his hands; when the storm subsides, he whips his arm across his body, flinging those miniaturized spikes back at the beast. He's still shivering; his aim is poor, and most simply chime to the floor. The others embed themselves in the creature's muzzle, to little effect.

"This _sucks_," Jack says furiously, teeth chattering—and he means all of it, the weakness, the way he knows he's invisible to all of Arendelle again, but most of all, the way he can finally feel the cold.

Elsa sweeps into the room, trailing scintillant snow and arrogance. She stops in the wreckage of the archway, narrowing her eyes in consternation and surveying the debris-strewn room. Her gaze roves around, skating right past Jack as if she doesn't even see him.

_As if she doesn't even see him_.

"Okay, not cool," Jack mutters, and throws himself at the walls, clambering over the icicles that bite at his hands, stealing ribbons of his blood to coil in their black depths. From the wall, he launches himself at the chandelier, setting it to oscillating as he hooks his hands over the toothed spokes of the snowflake sequence. They bite into his palms, feeling like ice and bone; he swings himself up and, nearly extinguishing one of the blue-flamed candles by accident, climbs to the top, where it grows out of the ceiling.

Down below, though Elsa cannot see him, the beast still knows where he is and stretches its wings once more, on the verge of taking off. "You should've learned," Jack says to the empty space below them, and then he slams a broken stiletto of an icicle into the narrowest point of the chandelier.

It shudders, and he hits it again, and it comes loose from the ceiling.

Jack's expecting it this time, so he manages to shove himself away, though the chandelier's dendrites clip him as he falls, sending him spiraling out of control toward the floor and the rising creature of ice. Chandelier and monster collide; ultramarine fire flickers and swells, burning high and wide and licking across the beast's fractal skin as the chandelier shatters across its back. Blue flames eat along its glittering wings, tearing new tatters in the intricate lace; its teeth crackle and burn, its legs spiderweb, its tail dissolves, its eyes shatter. It roars distress that cuts off into a screeching, grating sound, and it plummets back to the ground, where it splinters in a burst of wind and snow.

Jack hits the floor at about the same time, curled around himself. His whole body feels like a bruise when he pushes himself back to his knees. A tiny crack runs through his staff beneath his thumb; his breath catches in his throat at the feel of it. He can hardly see for the blood in his eyes—he wonders idly if Guardians can die from blood loss—but he knows one thing for sure:

Elsa's gaze is fixated on him again.

"That'll teach you to stop believing in me," he mutters, wiping blood off his face with his sleeve. Of course, now she can see him again—and he can barely stand.

"Okay," he says. "This has got to stop."

He sets his staff down, gently, as if tucking a child into sleep. Then he cups his hands in the drifting snowy ashes of the icy wolf-dragon's remains, packing together a snowball. He hurries, but he takes the time to make sure it's perfect. It curves in all the right places, the flawless ratio of ice and snow—and magic.

Jack whispers that flare of blue frost across it and stands up to face Elsa. His expression is smug, and barely restrained. He tosses the snowball up and down a few times; across the room, Elsa raises her hands, no doubt preparing to draw some new abomination from the air.

"Well," Jack says, "this's been fun."

And he throws the snowball.

Elsa stops it without a moment's hesitation, a plate of crystal sweeping across her face to block the glowing sphere, then dropping to reveal a raised eyebrow over an icy gaze.

"Did you really think that would work on me?"

Jack shrugs, shoving his hands into his pocket. His smugness is spreading into a grin; he can't stop it.

"Nah," he says, without pulling his hands free. "But this one will."

Elsa whirls around in a flurry of skirts and snow; another transparent shield leaps up just in time to stop a second snowball soaring in from behind. She frowns, then twists back to Jack with the tiny hint of a smile.

"That _might_ have worked," she says, "if you hadn't warned me."

"Sure," Jack says, nodding, and all of a sudden, the grin feels like it's going to split his face in two. "That's why I won't warn you about this—whoops."

And, laughing, he flips backwards, as Elsa pivots to catch another snowball with the magic in her hands.

"Or this one!" he yells, dancing away as she flings a bolt of ice at him in between catching a fourth snowball.

"Or _this_ one," he adds, finally pulling his hands out of his pockets so he can build himself a pillar of ice out of the broken floor. He grabs his staff off the ground again, and the pillar rises up beneath him, carrying him up to stand over Elsa as the snowballs come faster and faster, flickering white and blue, while she twirls and weaves her snow into a spiraling shield.

"How are you _doing_ that?" she shouts—and for a second, the room pulses red with the emotion.

From atop his pedestal, Jack grins—and across the room, Jack grins—and ducking out of the ruined archway, Jack grins—and dropping from the vaulted rafters, Jack grins—until the room runs rampant with Jack Frosts and their barrage of magic snowballs.

Jack-on-the-pillar yanks the clockwork snow-globe out of his sweatshirt pocket and looks down at it fondly. "Nobody believes in me," he says, lobbing it up and catching it. "But three months ago, somebody believed in _him _—" He points to one of the Jacks. "—and a month ago, somebody still believed in _him_—" Another Jack bows as he receives acknowledgment, then pitches another snowball at Elsa, who barely manages to stop it as an additional bobbing sphere comes hurtling in from behind. "—and three hours ago," adds the last Jack quietly, tucking the snow-globe back into his pocket and looking at a ragged, pale, and scarred Jack Frost scooping snow into his hands, "someone still believed in him."

For months he wandered Arendelle's castle halls, fidgeting with his clockwork globe, never going all the way forward, never ending up exactly where he wanted to be—until he took his time and his refurbished device on a slow journey to the North Mountain, and borrowed himself along the way.

"Time travel," he says, bending down to gather the pile of snow at his feet into his cupped hands, "and the most epic snowball fight in all of history." Elsa tries to look at him, but she's too busy blocking the bombardment of fun-imbued snowballs that the army of Jack Frosts is flinging at her, laughing as they dance around the room, over the ruined candles, across the bloodstain and the scarlet footprints that still run beneath the surface of the floor from the destruction of the original chandelier.

"Come on!" says Jack, a little annoyed. "You've gotta admit this is cool. Elsa. Elsa!"

He throws the snowball then, all the force of his body sending it hurtling toward the Queen of the Cold and Dark. And she looks—she looks away from her shields that flutter and whorl across the fusillade of past-Jacks' snowballs, and the last Jack's burst of _fun_ shatters full in her face.

"I love you, Elsa," he says, hopping down from his pillar of ice as an expression of surprise crosses her wide, shallow-sea eyes. Gradually, uncertainly, she looks like she might smile.

Then she falls.


	25. Heartbeat to Ice-Melt

A/N: In an alternate universe, Jack makes a very different choice in this chapter and everything he imagines comes to pass. It was so hard not to write that alternate universe. :p

This story finally has more reviews than chapters! Thanks, all. c: I think "beyond perfection" is a bit of an exaggeration, but it's a flattering one nonetheless and I can't express my smiles with mere emotes. CCC:

25 (Heartbeat to Ice-Melt)

Jack is already running, throwing himself at Elsa as she crumples. He slips and skids across the ice-strewn floor, coming to rest just barely touching her, his sleeves raked up and his skin red from the slide. He pushes himself to his knees, running a hand through his hair—leaving streaks of drying blood, and just kneels there for a minute, inches away from Elsa.

He knows it worked, because he can feel the ice going out of him. There is no more frost at his fingertips; the tiny root systems of ice at his edges are melting into the fabric of his clothing. The staff in his hand doesn't respond to his touch, doesn't flare with the dust of a glacier in its grooves—it's just a piece of wood. His hands shake, as if there is nothing solid left inside him to hold him steady. When he reaches for Elsa, he thinks he feels his heart beat once, and something warm in his veins.

He feels sick. He barely notices when the Jacks all around the room pull out their snow-globes and take themselves back to the moments they left when their future self came calling. They think this is finished.

Elsa's crown is shattered on the ground; the shimmer is fading out of her dress, leaving it wreathes of shadow and iron without the frost to hold it together. Above them, stalactite-icicles drip as they thaw, a thick rain that chimes against the glacial debris on the floor, echoing a last symphony of ice off the walls that run like watercolor.

"An act of true love thaws a frozen heart," Jack murmurs, leaning over Elsa as he touches her shoulder. Her skin flushes; the sound of her heart beating blood back through her veins joins the symphony of deliquescent ice. She stirs, opens glazed-over eyes that narrow at the sight of him, then wrinkle with confusion.

"Jack Frost," she says, sitting up, clutching shreds of shadow to herself.

"Not anymore," he says, scooping up a handful of ice fragments and watching them do—_absolutely nothing_ in his palm. "Just Jack." Elsa's eyes widen; one of her hands slashes across the air, but an equal amount of nothing occurs at her command.

"It's… gone?"

"I came all this way, didn't I?" Jack clenches his hand over the shards; they dig painfully into his palm, reminding him that the ice isn't his friend any longer. "Isn't that true love enough for you?" His breath catches in his throat and he doubles over, head in his hands. "It's what I was always afraid of," he whispers. He doesn't have anything left. He staved it off the whole way, the _whole way_, by telling himself he didn't have to do it, that he could just leave, that he _wasn't_ going to sacrifice himself for her—and none of those were acts of true love, so he clung to the vestiges of the power the Man in the Moon gave him. But then he did it anyway. He walked into her castle and told her he loved her, and he did it knowing what would happen to him—and because he knew it, it happened, and now he has no magic left to be a Guardian. To be anything.

But he isn't dead—any more dead than he was before—and he has Elsa, and those are two advantages he didn't expect to leave here with.

He looks back up at her, and the world erupts into shadows.

The night is escaping as the ice melts around it, coiling into obfuscating fog as thick as the darkness under the earth. It shrouds Jack's vision, but the only one of his past selves who stayed—the one who has no snow-globe of his own—yells, "_Watch it!"_—and Jack sees it, the scythe hurtling toward them, its teeth a ravenous lace of liquid obsidian, its blade as wide as Jack is tall. It is an inevitable devouring in Pitch's pallid hands, the Nightmare King risen from the murk of his castle with his armies here in his wake.

Jack cannot avoid the blade, and he cannot get Elsa out of the way.

He screams a powerless _"NO!" _at the plunging blade and throws himself forward to curl across her still-cold form. Elsa, yet dressed in sable and with ink in her hair, does not even flinch as the scythe consumes them both.

Jack yells his agony, but he cannot die again. He knows, because he wishes he could, in those interminable moments when the scythe is lancing into his back and cutting through to Elsa. There is a terrible light in her eyes as the blade bites deep, like the glow around a star that has gone out long before you stop seeing it.

"I told you that you would never have her back from me, Jack Frost!" Pitch crows through the restless stomping of his Nightmare horde. In his agony, Jack pushes himself up on his hands in a futile gesture of defiance. He feels the shades writhing in his veins where the ice-water used to be, seeking his heart.

Pitch stands suddenly beside him, his chin in his hand, his elbow resting on the end of his scythe, looking fondly down at Elsa—but there is an edge of bitterness to the ashen expression. "Your true love does an annoying job of thawing frozen hearts," says Pitch, drawing his fingers along the edge of his colossal blade. "But it can't bring light to a black one."

Jack shoves himself back, rolling off Elsa to gather her into quaking arms. Atramental veins branch like cobwebs across her pale skin, curling around her eyes like the legs of the spiders that once inhabited them, stretching down her neck and collarbone and writing new jewelry along her arms. His eyes feel raw and wide, and he is shaking as if caught in one of Elsa's storms.

"Lucky for you," says Pitch, with the sort of smirk that gives lie to the words, "_I _can take the night away."

He closes his hand over empty air, and the blackness rushes out of Elsa like a barbed spear leaving a wound; she arches her back and cries out. "A powerless queen is no use to me, you see!" Pitch calls over the sounds of her anguish, grinning with all his teeth. Frantically, Jack hangs on to her convulsing form, running his fingers through her hair, combing back the spikes that have plastered themselves to her face with sweat. _Sweat_. Heat. His hands must be cold to her now. He doesn't have any ice left in his veins, but he is still dead.

The shreds of shadow crawling out of Elsa wriggle past him on the ground like fuliginous worms, but some of them seem drawn to him, strafing sideways to seep into his skin. Jack reaches out one hand, fingers bent into claws, to scrape them toward him.

Elsa goes still, her breathing ragged, her eyes closed. Jack leans over her, pressing his forehead to hers. She shivers in his grip, feverish, rejecting his wintry touch.

"Don't," he whispers hoarsely. "Don't die." But she can't make the same promise he can—he has taken the immortality she gave herself. He sacrificed his power to wipe hers away. Her palace is dissolving around her, all that she has worked for turning to water and running through her hands.

There are still no stars.

"I do wonder if she'll wake up," Pitch says thoughtfully, and Jack turns his gaze to the Nightmare King, protective fury drawing his face into a grimace of a smile. The expression _hurts_, as if the muscles in his face are tearing with the motion. The poison of Pitch's black scythe writhes and thrashes inside him still, begging, _urging_, and Jack bears his teeth as if they are fangs.

"No," Pitch ponders aloud, "better not risk it, do you think? True love is a tricky thing."

And he moves, so fast that the other Jack in the room cannot cry warning—quicker than a striking spider, his blade still with Anna's blood on it. Jack swerves to intercept, but Pitch's knife goes straight through the spirit, tearing at his substance but not his flesh. Jack grabs for him, but his resistance is immaterial. _He_ is immaterial—Elsa falls through him, her head rebounding off the fragmented floor, her body arcing against the emptiness that holds her.

"No, no no no!" Jack cups his hands around her shoulders, but he is silent-invisible-intangible, he is _nothing_. "No no no no no, Elsa, no, if you die Kristoff is going to be king and you can't want that—"

Perhaps her lips curve up into the tiniest flicker of a smile—or perhaps it is just the last gasp of breath ghosting into the winter air.

Jack throws himself to his feet, whirling around to grab at Pitch Black as the Nightmare King flits back from the nightmare he has written into Jack's spirit. The whole castle shudders around them, writhing with shadows that crawl up the walls and tears chunks of ice from the already-thawing walls. Debris rains down around them; around the edges of the room, past Jacks throw up frosted shields, ducking out of the way of crashing rubble, each display of white power a stabbing reminder of what Jack Frost has last.

He has a different power inside him.

Pitch's scythe left it behind, and Elsa's escaping shadow joined it, and it throbs within him, promising, promising. Pitch can see it; he is laughing, waltzing with himself as he watches Jack struggle: Jack is invisible, Jack is powerless, Jack could _finally accept his offer_. Black magic instead of white. Pick up where Elsa left off.

It would change everything. Two hundred years in the future, he would _fight against himself_. He can see it—with the clockwork snow-globe in his pocket, he has the power of Father Time in his hands. Part of him whispers that this is the only reason Pitch is still offering a place at his side—for after all, the powerless have no use to him. Jack doesn't care. He wouldn't _be_ powerless, if he turned back time, raised up Elsa and brought her to stand beside him in the future they ruled where their love would never die.

Jack can feel the dusk settling into him: his hair blackening, dark veins running beneath the surface of his skin, ink staining the fabric of his sweatshirt. Several feet away, his staff wraps itself in shadow, little white lightning dancing over its grooves. Pitch watches with glee, his hands in triumphant fists. All Jack can think of is Elsa dead, Anna dead, the both of them returned to him, his best friend and his snow queen, and the world under the protection of their wintry night.

The power waltzes behind his eyes. Jack takes it, and it consumes him.

He doesn't feel weak and empty any longer. The night is in his bones, and it is stronger than belief. He is invisible only until Elsa stands beside him once again, ruling from the shadows that support them.

Jack pulls the snow-globe out of his pocket, holding it on one outstretched palm. Threads of fractal gloom writhe beneath the skin of his hand, around the base of the globe. It shudders as if it is more than clockwork, as if the magic in it knows how it is about to be abused.

"Elsa," Jack says aloud. _Elsa Elsa Elsa Elsa._ He thinks of her, of her heart encased in ice and his the same, the two of them raising snowstorms together, of commanding blizzards, of skating across the fjords gone solid at their desire.

And then he thinks about how far he came to save her from just this.

Jack looks up at Pitch with eyes that feel bruised, that feel like he hasn't slept in years—and he hasn't, but for flirting with the nightmares. And Jack smiles, the expression wild and wicked and so _very_ smug.

"You come into a room full of _me_," he says, "and you kill her, you _kill Elsa_ and you seriously expect me to _join you_?"

Pitch laughs. "You haven't a single snowflake left to your name, _Frost_." He spreads his arms wide, gesturing at Jack coated in black. "And you are so very nearly mine."

Jack narrows his eyes. "I am not."

"Not today, perhaps," Pitch agrees. "But now I know." He points at Jack, at the shadows in his hair and his eyes. "I know that you can be tempted, Jack Frost. And I have two hundred _years_ of poor, _unsuspecting_ Jack Frost to tempt." _What goes together better than cold and dark?_ The memory is as potent now as it ever was, Jack before he was a Guardian, Jack when he was alone. Pitch will always try. Pitch has seen what the cold and dark can do together, and he will not give it up.

Jack points, too, at the single incarnation of himself still standing across the room. Pitch turns, tilting his head. The past Jack looks younger—not that Jack has aged since he died, but something in three centuries of loneliness has settled into his eyes. This Jack has a ferity to him, an angry and untamed look despite how pale he is about the edges—like the whole world could walk right through him. He bows ironically as the attention turns to him, spraying whirlpools of frost across the rubble from his outstretched hands. The sight of his power sends a pang of loss stabbing through his future self.

"Not unsuspecting," says the last Jack.

"I'll be ready for you, Pitch," says his self from two hundred years ago and right now, his self from all the way across the world. He wears a smirk like he was born to it, and his staff glows like a glacier with a flame inside it. The wall behind him is the only one through which the mountain slope is not visible, the force of his cold holding up the thawing castle. The floor beneath them is dripping itself away, opening holes for the detritus of winter to cascade to the halls below.

In an instant, the younger Jack swings his staff around, blasting spirals of ice toward Pitch. Pitch snarls and spins shadow across himself, but he doesn't return fire. Instead, he pivots, reaching one hand out toward the older Jack. Startled, Jack recoils, but tendrils of night are spiraling in, aiming for his outstretched palm. Before he can run, or hide it, the shadows have claimed the clockwork snow-globe, ripping it away from his feeble grip. The castle rumbles and slants; Jack goes sliding sideways, ink running out of him to trail across the ground with the ice-melt. He returns gradually to his normal color as he stumbles toward the wall, grabbing for an icicle stud to hold onto, but it breaks off in his hand. The departure of the black power _aches_, leaves him feeling emptier than ever. "Pitch, give it back!" he shouts over the noise of the castle's structural support giving way; the only response is Pitch's chuckling echoing through the shattered glass. The shadows are stretching upward towards the vaulted ceiling; the younger Jack runs for them, swinging his staff, but they collapse down upon him. He leaps out of the way just in time, and the night floods out of the castle, taking Pitch with it while his laughter lingers on.


	26. Crumbling

A/N: Hey guys, exciting news! I actually finished writing this fic last night. It's 32 chapters and I intend to keep posting one chapter a day, so that should give you an idea of how much time we have left together. ;D

I also want to take a moment to apologize for the amount of typos you've probably found in this story. xD A lot of this was written hyped-up on sugar or sleep deprivation, and I literally don't even reread the chapters before I post them for you guys (unless it's one of my favorite chapters, heh), so you're getting a lot of unfiltered typing. If there's anything so bizarre that it actually interferes with your comprehension of the sentence, please let me know so I can fix it!

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go sleep for a week.

26 (Crumbling)

"Uh—Jack! Me!" shouts the older Jack, his fingers curled around the razor edge of one of the thawed holes in the wall. The whole room—the whole building—is at a steep angle; one of the delicate spires collapses past the gaping hole in a spray of snow and colored glass. He wishes for the ability to fly again, but he supposes at this point he's just lucky that his past self can see him. He wouldn't believe in himself in this state.

The younger Jack darts across the wreckage, deftly avoiding the icicles plummeting from the ceiling. He grabs the back of his future self's sweatshirt, grinning through a "Come on, old man."

"Hey, have a little respect for your elders," the older Jack says, mustering his own smile.

"Yeah, when you earn it," says the younger Jack, and throws them both out the hole in the wall.

He loses his grip on his future self as they tumble through the air. Letting out a whoop of exhilaration, he swings out his staff and hooks it around the older Jack's torso, corralling him in time to lift them both back onto a current of wind. Something inside the palace bursts, splashing them with splinters of crystal. The Jack who can still fly spins them both around, laughing at the powerless Jack's yell of mingled indignation and delight—and regret and loss. They spiral away from the crumbling castle and drift lightly into the snow, younger Jack alighting like a bird, older Jack crashing into a snowbank like a brick. He emerges with white in his hair and a grin on his face. His younger self returns it, cocking an eyebrow.

"Now what, old man?"

The older Jack's smile slides away; he brushes himself off, then runs his fingers through his hair. They come away black, as if he's dipped them in wet paint. His younger self shoulders his staff and starts walking in circles, covering the ground in frantic spirals of frost with every step he takes. They go whirling outwards, faster and faster, drawing out a nervous energy in the snow. The older Jack grabs him by his hood and pulls him backwards as pieces of the castle come lurching down the slope toward them, leaving deep gashes in the mountain's ivory dress. They turn and run, younger Jack skipping into the air, dipping and soaring over his earthbound future. When the chasm yawns up from the mountainside, its skewed snowflake bridge already dissolved, the older Jack windmills his arms, trying to careen to a stop; his past incarnation just curls his fingers in the back of his hoodie and throws them both across the gap.

Once again, Jack digs himself out of the snow, then turns to watch the palace fall. Rubble bounces and cracks and cascades over the edge, down toward the center of the earth; a vast river of ice-melt cuts through the snow, pouring down the brink and freezing into icicles as long as Jack's staff.

His staff.

The older Jack looks at the younger, who is perched on top of his staff, which stands straight up in the snow. He holds out his empty hands in front of him, watching the last of the black veins drain away, as if he is bleeding out. His staff stayed in the castle when it fell.

Elsa stayed in the castle when it fell.

His breath goes ragged, catching over what feels like broken glass lining his lungs. He isn't sure he can stop the tears burning cold at the corners of his eyes, but he scrubs his sleeve roughly across them because he has to try. He's lost everything. He's screwed up _everything. _

"Hey, are you _crying_?"

Jack takes a deep breath, inhaling sharp winter air. Spring is already coming to the world far below them; he can see emerald in the distance, new grass peeking through liquescent snow. Spring, long delayed, is setting foot in Arendelle again.

Dawn isn't.

"Get out of here," Jack says to his past self, exhaling his despair as he turns to face the abyss awaiting him. "Thanks for your help. Go ho—" He pauses, closing his eyes. There is no _home_; there never has been. Where did he pluck his past self from? "Go back to the Atlantic."

"No way! This is great, you can see me, we can _talk_, plus this is way cool." Younger Jack stuffs his hands in his pockets and peers down into the chasm. "So much more exciting than standing in the ocean throwing snowballs at seals." He cocks his head at his future self. "_Plus_ you're pretty useless right now. No staff, no powers. I can help."

He's right about the _useless_ part; Jack is little more than a ghost now. He clutches his hands in his hair and says, "I really need you to stay alive right now so that we'll be around in two hundred years to come back and fix this."

Younger Jack scoffs. "You think I could die down there? Tried that once. Didn't stick." He grins. "Anyway, if we're not around, none of this can happen, so there won't be anything to fix."

His older, wiser self shakes his head. "Ask me why I didn't go back."

"Huh?"

"Ask me why I didn't go back in time far enough to just… stop it all." He looks up at the ruin of the castle, hardly anything left but ghosts, transparent building blocks slowly melting away. "Why I didn't tell my idiot younger self—" He raises an eyebrow at his even-younger younger self. "—to kiss Elsa and keep the whole kingdom safe."

"Because you wanted to keep your awesome ice powers?" the younger Jack suggests.

Jack snorts, raising empty hands. "Yeah, that worked out well for me."

"Okay, I've made better plans." Younger Jack shrugs and swings himself down from his staff and leans up against it. "So why?"

"I wouldn't have believed it." Older Jack crouches to draw in the snow with one grimy finger, letting his past self look down on him. "Nothing would make me believe that Elsa could do…" He twists around, gesturing out across the starless night. "All this. Hurt people. Hurt _kids_, then say she was protecting them. Join Pitch. Go mad."

"Otherwise known as turning evil."

Jack nods, pulling up his hood and burying his face in the crook of his elbow. "I never would have believed Elsa would turn evil."

"Not even if you told _yourself_?"

"C'mon, if someone who looked like you turned up claiming the girl you were in love with was gonna turn evil and try to take over the world with Pitch Black, what would you do?"

Younger Jack cocks his head. The ground shakes beneath them as a particularly massive chunk of the palace crashes over the edge. "Someone who looked like me turned up claiming some queen had turned evil and was trying to take over the world with Pitch Black. I just thought it sounded like fun. Or at least, less boring than what I was doing."

"Yeah," says older Jack wearily. "Sounds about right."

He stands up, moving the last few feet to the brink of the abyss that has taken him once to the center of the earth, and will take him there again, to that lightless realm of hungry fear.

"Pitch is down there," he says. "Messing with time."

His younger self rolls his eyes. "And we're up here moping about it." He points his staff at the cliff; a frozen ramp zigzags out of it, rebounding off the far side of the chasm and again off the near side, weaving downward. "So let's go."

"You can't come," says older Jack, folding his arms.

"Yeah, I can."

"Get out of here!"

"Make me!"

Jack makes a sound of frustration, intensely aware of how the Guardians would laugh to see him annoyed by himself. He could almost hear Bunny: _Now y'know how we feel, mate. _

"If you don't go, this'll never happen."

"So? I thought we decided that was a good thing."

Jack throws out his hands with another exasperated noise. "Ugh! You are so infuriating!"

"You're taking yourself too seriously!"

Jack exhales noisily because he knows his younger self is right. His center is gone. His center is fresh powder on the breeze. But he can't let himself come with on this one.

He paces along the edge of the cliff, trying to find the words to explain. He remembers, for a painful instant, making footprints in this same snow. There is no trace of him now. "Pitch said once that if I hadn't shown up here the first time and made Elsa believe in me, she might've turned evil a lot sooner."

"I can't believe we fell in love with this chick."

Jack gives his younger self an irritated look. "So you're gonna have to come, you see? Even though you know how much it's going to screw up, we're still going to steal that snow-globe from North, because if we don't, things could still be this bad, only there won't be anyone—there won't be _me_—to come back and—" _And give up everything. _"—and fix it."

"Doesn't look fixed."

"I'm not done yet, okay?" He shoves his hands into his pocket. "I'll get that snow-globe back."

"With my help."

"No! Don't you get it!"

"What if I don't care?"

He should have known, when he went seeking himself from this era, that he would be difficult. He isn't half mad yet, but it's a downward spiral from here to there.

"Trust me. Nothing that happens down there is going to be very fun."

"Yeah, not with you in charge."

They glare at each other, and the older of the two reflects that he's wasting time, making just as much of a mess of this as everything else he's done in this century.

He takes another deep breath and says, "If you wait long enough, kids'll believe in you."

The younger Jack flinches, slipping past the support of his staff and only grabbing it at the last second to keep from falling into the void. "What?"

"Yeah. Couple hundred years, give or take, and someone's gonna see you. And then a lot of someones." Older Jack grins. "And then a whole lot of snow days."

"I already do snow days."

"Not like this you don't." He scuffs at the snow without making a mark, letting his grin widen. "Man, I cannot _tell_ you how fun it's gonna be."

"Why didn't you mention this before?" Younger Jack yanks his staff out of the snow, twirling it excitedly. "Couple hundred years? Can I speed it up a bit?"

"Nah, you're gonna have to wait. But it'll be worth it, I promise." Jack thinks of Jamie and tries not to let his smile become a grimace. He doesn't know if even Jamie will be able to see him now.

"You have to go though. If you stay here, it won't… work." He shakes his head, tangling his fingers in his hair again. "Ugh, time travel gives me a headache."

His past self eyes him suspiciously, wearing a dry grin. "C'mon, you're just trying to get rid of me."

"Is it working?"

He folds his arms around his staff. "They're going to see me?"

"Yeah."

"And hear me?"

"Yeah."

"They'll know it was me whenever something fun happens in winter?"

"You bet."

The Jack who doesn't, yet, know what it means to be a Guardian hesitates, then asks, his voice very small, "And my memories?"

The Jack who remembers saving his sister hears again her frantic voice, calling his name; feels the ice dropping out from underneath him; recalls what it was like to drown. "Those too," he says.

His younger self's eyes widen and the wind picks up around them. Finally, he nods.

"Alright, you've got me. I'll get out of your hair."

"Thanks."

Younger Jack snorts. "That's probably not anything to thank me for. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't die down there, but I dunno about you." He gestures with a spiraling frost flower. "You look kind of… depressing."

Older Jack laughs hollowly.

"Hey," says the past, stuffing hands in his pocket. "Here's an idea. Just tell me what's going to happen. If I know, I can stop it." He looks excited. "We can make everything turn out the way we want it!"

Jack smiles wryly. "Yeah, but what fun would that be?" He steps up to the edge, where his past incarnation's ice ramp still descends a few feet into the darkness. Eyeing it critically, he starts to back up. "Past's not that easy to change." He sees Anna in his mind's eye, dead every time, dead _over and over_ and he never able to stop it. "You think you can fix it because you know, but you can't." He looks over his shoulder at himself, who's watching his progress backwards through the snow with some trepidation. "Knowing just makes you cocky. You're still gonna fall in love. And you're still gonna pick our powers over her. 'Cause you think you can change what happens next."

"How do you know for sure though?"

"Because I'm still here," says the last Jack in the timeline. "I'm still about to jump back into a giant hole in the ground. And I still don't have any powers."

He takes off running, throwing himself onto the ramp left by his younger double; he hurtles down it, bouncing off the far wall and slinging himself back the other direction. "Hey, do me a favor!" he hollers back up to himself, who has dashed to the edge of the cliff to watch his older incarnation career into the abyss. "Yell at the Man in the Moon for me when you see him again!"

"No problem!" his younger self shouts. "And whatever happens down there, try and remember to have a little _fun_!"

"As if!" Jack yells, and then he runs out of ramp and plummets into the void.


	27. What Are You Afraid Of?

27 (What Are You Afraid Of?)

The black fog rises once again, and this time it swallows him whole. Dragged by nebulous tendrils of night, he rushes toward the center of the earth, unfriendly wind in his hair, darkness in his eyes.

He lands hard—something cracks; he gasps—winded, he doubles over in a foot of frigid water flowing down into the depths of Pitch's lair. Splintery icicle-rubble peppers his back, remnants of the castle above, reminders that all that Elsa strove for is still falling. His sweatshirt is soaked up to his elbows where the rivers laps at them—and soggy around the hood, where his white roots have melted into nothing more than dark blue patches on his collar.

Something bobs against his side; he lashes out at it without looking, but turns his head slightly when the feel of it is familiar. His staff drifts along the current, brought down with the avalanche of iced debris. The tide bumps it gently against his leg, his arm, until it is free of the obstruction and continues sailing down into the dark.

It is nothing more than a piece of wood now, but Jack flings himself to his feet and dashes after it. He scoops it out of the cold water; there is no rush of magic filling in the empty spaces inside him, but the feel of his fingers closing around its familiar grooves is like comfort food. He clutches it tightly and figures if nothing else, he can hit Pitch with it. A piece of wood is a piece of wood, magical or not.

Jack is soaked all the way through from all the splashing, but at least he isn't shivering. The dead don't get much colder, he supposes.

Protean silhouettes are already flickering up the damp walls, black shapes laughing and pointing as he slogs through the shallow river of ice-melt, trying not to stumble in the current. Jack rolls his eyes, shouldering his useless staff, and steps out to stand among the hanging prisons at the center of the earth.

They look nearly as they always did, but for the snowmelt clinging to the metal like dew. Snowflakes no longer swing beneath them or dust the towering archways or line the floor. Elsa's influence is gone, and Pitch's home hasn't changed.

"I've been expecting you, Jack Frost."

"Ya think?" Jack tilts his head back, ignoring the mocking shadows in favor of staring up at the one cage he knows is occupied—the cage where Anna died. He thinks he can see a glimmer of blue, her iced-over skin, where he preserved her before he went to stop her sister, but most likely he is just imagining it. Anna's prison—Anna's tomb—is too far above him to make out any details. Craning his head back, Jack walks a circle as he advances, watching the play of shade on the vaulted ceiling. He doesn't have a plan. He doesn't have powers. He doesn't even know why he's down here, except he has to get the snow-globe back before Pitch makes things worse than Jack already has.

Pitch emerges from one of the precariously-stacked archways, flanked by a pair of Nightmares. They look like rotting corpses, tainted snow flaking away in ropes and tatters, but their eyes still burn into Jack from across the ruined cathedral of a room. Pitch strokes one under the chin, twining his other hand through the ribboning mane of the second. "Come to reclaim your device?"

"That's the idea."

Knowing it's futile, Jack lurches into a run, staff swung back over his shoulder, ready to strike. Pitch mounts onto one of his tatterdemalion Nightmares and it arches itself into the air, taking both of them out of Jack's reach. He lets his staff fall, dangling it like he's defeated; when the second Nightmare lunges toward him, taking advantage of his vulnerability, he reverses his staff and jams the end of it up into a hole in the Nightmare's throat. Yanking backwards, he drags a glowing gouge through its neck; it leaks thick liquid the color of a bruise, leaving a wound that smolders a glacial blue like Elsa's castle at twilight.

The Nightmare rears back, whinnying a grating distress. Pitch snaps and it pounces into flight to join him. Jack cradles his staff in the crook of his elbow and leans back against the air.

"Jack Frost," says Pitch ponderously, shaking his head with a small, condescending smile. "Jack Frost with nothing left to lose. And yet you fight us." He reaches out to pat the Nightmare with the throat wound.

"I got plenty left to lose," says Jack indignantly. Pitch laughs disdainfully, and Jack smiles wryly.

"What are you _afraid _of, Jack?"

"Don't you usually know the answer to that question?"

Jack realizes, cocking his head up at the Nightmare King and his dilapidated Nightmares, that he doesn't even know the answer to that question. He feels too weary to be afraid of anything; all the fear has drained out of him with the loss of Anna, Elsa, his powers. He supposes he worries that Pitch will find the children, but he has too much confidence in Kristoff to really fear that. Perhaps he worries that he won't make it back to his own time, but the idea of the reception he's going to get is almost enough to make him want to just stay here. In the ruins of his failures. In the ruins, he realizes, of a kingdom that could have been his, if he really wanted it. Elsa did ask him to marry her, after all. Elsa did ask him to be king.

Over and over again.

Jack runs his hand through his hair, wiping away some of the water that has dripped onto his face from the thaw. Everything he was afraid of has already come true.

"Just come down here and fight me, Pitch."

"But why? It wouldn't even be a fight."

"I can still kick your butt any day."

Pitch bares his teeth in a self-satisfied grin. "Not even if I stood still." He raises one hand to gesture and Nightmares emerge from the gloom at the edges of the room, surrounding Jack completely. He pretends not to notice, though he can feel their gazes searing into him, flickering with bad dreams: _Elsa dead, Elsa dead, Elsa dead. _But that's not just a bad dream anymore—he watched it happen. Let it happen. Made it happen, he could even say.

He flips his staff around, pointing it up at Pitch and his airborne Nightmares. Pitch just shakes his head.

"I can't tell you how long I've waited for this moment," he says, affecting a dreamy expression underneath eyes that glitter with cruelty. "Jack Frost, alone, invisible, and powerless. No one to believe in you. Oh, ever since Elsa told me how you would defeat me… I suppose, in some ways I've been waiting centuries." He snaps, and his wounded Nightmare drops out of the air; Jack twirls his staff to aim at it again, this time determined to take off its head.

It gnashes its teeth at him; while he's distracted, another charges from the side, latching onto his sweatshirt with its decomposing teeth. With a twist of its head, it flings him to the side; Jack lands in a deep puddle, nearly losing his grip on his staff, and it takes him a moment to get back to his feet. By the time he's standing again, a third Nightmare is rushing toward him. He swings for its head, but it ducks, headbutting him back into the same puddle. Above them, Pitch laughs and laughs.

Jack peers up at him through one eye, the other closed against the pain. Pitch sees him looking and flicks his wrist, pulling the clockwork snow-globe out of a pocket of shadow. He rolls it over the back of his hand, examining it like a jeweler who's been gifted with a rare diamond from someone who didn't know its worth.

"You haven't been very careful with your toys, Jack," he says. "Didn't anyone warn you about playing with time?"

A Nightmare trots up behind Jack and lifts him by the back of his sweatshirt. Jack struggles, but only barely—more out of obligation than the energy to actually fight. There isn't even a glimmer of frost at his fingertips. He jabs his staff backwards without much force; another Nightmare wrenches it from his grasp. Jack scowls.

"The Easter Bunny mentioned it," he says, "but I figured he just didn't want me to accidentally cancel Easter or something." He awkwardly aims a punch over his shoulder toward the Nightmare's face—for form's sake—and it shakes him dizzyingly. Pitch motions and Jack's Nightmare captor trots into the air. They stand face-to-face with Pitch and his Nightmare steed; Pitch rests his elbows on his mount's neck and cups his chin with his hands.

"I can't kill you, Jack Frost," he says.

"Yeah, you're pretty bad at that. Ow!" he adds as the Nightmare shakes him again, like a dog with a dead rodent.

"But _you_," Pitch continues, as if Jack hasn't spoken, "can't do _anything_. You are nothing without your powers." He smiles, slowly, showing every single one of his sharp teeth. "Just like you always feared."

At another gesture from its king, the Nightmare whirls, carting Jack upward to the hanging garden of cages. Jack thrashes, suddenly afraid—and Pitch knows it, because Pitch's shadows grow up the walls, grinning too wide, fed by Jack's fear. Jack knew coming down here was hopeless, but he never considered it would end like this, end with him trapped in the dark and so far from the sky. He shouts wordlessly, flailing empty hands at his captor. He won't ever see the Man in the Moon again. He won't even have space to move.

"Let's see," says Pitch, as if he is deciding—but it is obvious he already knows. "Which cage would be the most luxurious for our honored guest? He will be here an _awfully_ long time, after all. We do want him to be comfortable."

Jack feels sick, nausea clawing deep into his stomach. His staff is far away and he is ascending inexorably toward the body of his best friend and an eternity of stillness and dark and he can't, he _can't_—

Pitch snaps his fingers and the cage door springs open, there in the center of the throng. "Ah," he says, sounding smug as the spider in its web, "perhaps he would enjoy some company." He twists a writhing strand of his steed's mane around his fingers. "What do you think, my lovely? _I_ think we should leave him a friend."

Jack gives one last flail, knocking his elbow into the side of the Nightmare's neck, and nearly wrenches himself free. The Nightmare neighs harshly, the sound high-pitched and horrible, and tosses Jack into the cage. The door clatters shut as Jack crashes into the far side; lights waltz in his vision as his head bangs against intricate metal bars, and he slides down to slump next to Anna's corpse.

Pitch's chortling echoes enough to wake the dead. The light leaks out of the room as he whirls his Nightmare around, galloping upward towards the empty sky, leaving Jack with nothing but the sound of running water and the muteness of the grave.

"Enjoy your immortality, Jack," Pitch's voice crows from all the corners of the room. "It seems we both have some time to kill."

-o-

It's the little things you notice the most, when the world is empty around you. Ice-melt burbles far below; water drips into water, plinking like off-kilter piano keys. The ironwork on the cage bars isn't cold, exactly, but it sears into him with something that isn't heat, either—something that paralyzes him, stops his heart beating, holds his lungs in thrall. Anna's silhouette is sprawled like a languishing Nightmare beside him. Jack can see, but only just—there is barely enough light to make shadows, but they promenade around the edges of his vision, moving only enough to keep him turning his head, thinking Pitch is returning. Thinking anyone is returning. Thinking someone is coming. He is already halfway to the edge of crazy, imagining an eternity of this.

He pulls his hood up and wraps his arms around his knees, staring at Anna while his eyes struggle to adjust to the grimy grey gloom. She still lies face down, from falling forward, but her head is turned to the side, hair fraying out of her braid to curl across her cheek. Like everything he and Elsa have done, Anna is thawing: dew beads her eyelashes; frost gilds the embroidery of her dress; snowmelt runs in rivulets down the strands of her hair. Soon his glacial coffin will vanish entirely, leaving her to rot in her prison, and him to watch.

Jack walks his fingers along the cage floor beside him, making the motions though he has no power to back it up. A cruel part of his mind whispers that he wanted this to happen. He lost everything, failed everyone; this is his punishment and his relief: to be trapped far away from the world and its responsibilities, its judgments. Down here in the dark he is suffering for his mistakes, but there is no one to witness his shame. Perhaps this is the reason he sent himself away and came down to face the Nightmares with nothing.

"Shut up," he whispers to his knees.

His thoughts turn, inevitably, to Elsa instead—the things he never said, the fun they could have had—her face as she died, not quite a smile. If she had woken up, would she have forgiven him? Or would she have blamed him for everything the kingdom had suffered and sent him away after he had given up everything to love her?

"Shut up shut up shut _up_." He shoves his hands into his hoodie pocket and presses them against his stomach, folding in on himself. There isn't any use dwelling on the past any more than on the future—the snow-globe is gone, and he can't change either.

Jack rubs his thumb along the interior seams of his pocket as if he can repaint the seams, feeling the grit of the last vestiges of Dreamsand that have gotten caught between the threads. He rests his chin on his knees and remembers that forever is a very long time to be alone.

Anna stirs.

Jack doesn't notice it at first, sure it is the concerted flicker of the shadows giving eerie life to his dreams. He turns his head away, pulling his hood over his the side of his face. But then, beneath the froth of the current below, he hears a cough.

"Wow," he says, turning his head halfway back toward Anna's body. "Going crazy already. What is that, two hours? I think that's a personal record."

Anna coughs again, and it racks her whole body. Jack jumps to his feet, nearly hitting his head on the cramped ceiling of the cage, then falling backwards against the bars. His balance isn't what it was when he had the wind to support him.

"Anna?"

"Jack?" She pushes herself up on her hands, then collapses back down with a gasp of pain. Blood trickles sluggishly from the wound on her back, an ugly blackish ooze in the dim light. "Ah. Ow. What happened?" Jack crouches down beside her, unsure how to help her. She hisses in anguish when she tries to sit up. "That Pitch freak stabbed me!" She cranes her head to see over her shoulder, but the twisting motion sends new shudders of agony down her spine. "Am I still bleeding? Why haven't you done anything about that, are you first-aid challenged or something?" Tentatively, she leans forward to start ripping strips off the hem of her skirt. She has trouble tearing, the force required straining her injury past her tolerance levels; Jack leans forward to take over.

And with a fold of fabric clutched between his fingers, he realizes she can see him. "Are you really alive?" he asks her, uncertainty and desperation nearly choking off his words.

"That or we're both hallucinating pretty heavily," she says cheerfully, yanking her skirt back and finally managing to rip off an uneven strip of fabric. "Here, help me wrap these around, will ya?"

Jack throws himself at her, hugging her so tightly she shrieks with the pain of it. He hastily lets go with a quick "sorry," then settles back on his heels to survey her as she struggles with her makeshift bandages.

"Okay, you're being really useless over there. Could you hurry up and give me a hand? We have to go get Elsa."

Jack, with his hand outstretched, freezes. His mouth opens wordlessly, then closes, and his hand drops. Anna doesn't notice.

"How did you get in here, anyway? Hey, are we _locked in_ together?" She pauses, tangled in her fraying fabric. "Good job. Now we're even worse off. Ow."

He just stares at her. He can't get his head around _Anna's alive_ and he can't get his tongue around _Elsa's dead. _

"Jack, come on! Help me or say something or _something_."

"You believe in me," he says.

She pauses, looks at him askance. "Well of course I do." He wonders if that will change when he tells her he let her sister die.

He reaches forward again and takes the fabric strips from her. His hands are shaking and she is shivering, but together they tie the bandages awkwardly around her chest. Blood blots the fabric like an angry bruise, and something lacy glitters around the wound.

Jack stops, then stretches out his hand to brush his fingers over the bandages, his mouth open slightly in disbelief. The faintest traces of frost blossom across Anna's back.

Jack lets out a whoop and jumps back, clenching his fist in triumph and grinning so wide it hurts. It isn't much, it's barely anything, but it isn't nothing.

"Yeah, alright!" Anna says happily. "Uh, Jack, why are we cheering?"

"We're not trapped! Everything is—" He stops. He isn't sure he can say _going to be okay_, because making frost flowers isn't the same as finding and defeating the Nightmare King and bringing back the dead. "It isn't hopeless, anyway," he concludes.

"Well that's an improvement. I think. Did I _miss_ something?"

He seizes her hands, this time being careful not to jostle her injury. "You were dead! You were dead and I froze you—and I guess you weren't dead! And—Anna, this is great! No, this is amazing! The ice melted and you woke up and I'm not invisible anymore, this is _great_, you can _see _me,-and you believe and my powers are coming back and—hold up." She raises her eyebrow as he comes to a screeching halt. "Why are my powers coming back? Not that I want to question it. But 'only an act of true love will thaw a frozen heart,' and all that jazz. Not an act of… disbelief." He frowns at her. "But the Guardians—their magic came back when Jamie and the kids believed in them again—this doesn't make sense. If true love thaws a frozen heart, what refreezes it?"

Anna smiles, and the expression is too sinister for her, too sharp and wide. Jack blinks and she is rotting, flesh hanging off her face, an empty socket where her vibrant eye should be. No—not empty; something burns behind it, something pallid and old fills the spaces behind her skin.

"The absence of true love," says Pitch's voice through Anna's mouth. "Doesn't it feel good to be alone again, Jack?"

Jack gasps and slams himself awake against the bars of his cage. He breathes heavily for a moment, the sound echoing in the darkness. Anna lies yet lifeless beside him.

He should have realized being imprisoned by the Nightmare King would involve an eternity of nightmares. Biting back despair, Jack buries his head against his knees and does not let himself cry. Not yet.


	28. Conversations with Dead People

A/N: I stole the title of this chapter right off an episode of Buffy and I am not sorry.

This gets… a little bit grisly, sooooo

28 (Conversations with Dead People)

Anna coughs.

Jack doesn't even lift his head. It's the fourth time he's had this nightmare. Maybe the fifth. He doesn't know if he's been down here minutes or hours or days. It could be years—maybe Pitch has spread the blackout zone across the whole world by now. Jack's pretty sure Pitch would occasionally come back to his lair to gloat about this if it were the case, but maybe Jack's wrong. Or maybe Pitch _is_ here, sending him the same nightmare over and over again. Giving Anna back, giving his powers back, taking them away again.

"You could at least shake things up a bit," he mutters to his knees. "Let me see Elsa instead."

That would undoubtedly be worse, he thinks. Seeing her, holding her, telling her the things he failed to say—then having her ripped away. He'd rather be stuck in a cycle with Anna.

"Jack?"

Elsa sits up in front of him, and Jack bites down on his tongue so hard it bleeds, to stop the tears from choking him. He's not going to cry. He's not going to give Pitch the satisfaction.

"Ah. Ow. What happened?"

He can't stop himself from peeking up at her, just to see her bangs fall across her face, the vulnerability in her eyes. She's wearing the ice dress from the first day they met. Frost glitters in her hair, spirals outward from the hole in her chest. Ragged sequins of ice flake off the edge of the wound as she brushes her hand across it.

"Pitch stabbed me?" The expression in her eyes is one of surprised betrayal, and that alone is agony to Jack. That she loved Pitch enough that it was possible for him to _betray_ her. That she trusted him enough. "Am I still bleeding?"

"No," says Jack, voice muffled in his knees once again. "You're dead."

"Come on, Jack, where's your sense of humor?"

"I lost it. Somewhere between losing my staff for the third time and losing everyone I care about. You know me. Just can't keep track of anything."

She laughs and leans down to tear scintillant scraps off the hem of her dress. They crackle and chime in distress. "Aren't you going to help me bandage my wounded heart?"

"No," he says. "Do it yourself."

The facsimile of his queen crawls over to him and lays a hand on his shoulder. "But Jack," she says, "I believe in you." Her palm comes away bright with frost. His frost.

"What difference does that make?" he snaps. "You're dead."

"So are you." Pitch shows behind her eyes; her own skull shows behind her smile. "Alone again, Jack?"

Jack lets out an echoing cry of frenzy, turning to ram his staff against the walls of his prison. It resounds off the metal with a clang like a church bell. He grits his teeth and pants, then looks down at the wood in his hand.

"Wait, what?"

As soon as he questions it, the staff turns black, and swells into a wriggling, long-armed Fearling, slick and slimy in his hand. He growls his disgust and flings it away from him; it slithers between the ornate scrollwork on the cage bars and vanishes into the dark.

Elsa coughs.

-o-

After the third time he has watched Elsa rot away before him, Jack starts talking to her.

He knows exactly why: it's a symptom of the loneliness. He's been here before, silent and invisible and desperate for anyone to listen to him. Used to be that _anyone_ ended up himself, but now it's his own worst nightmares come home to roost.

But he tells her the things he forgot to say, or would have said when they'd gone home to Arendelle. "I figured out your center," he finds himself saying conversationally to an Elsa with her clothing in graveyard tatters and her eyes windows to an abyss. His rotting queen pauses and cocks her head, and she manages to look sad without any eyes to convey the expression. To his surprise, they fade back in as he watches, pale cyan looking at him with a smile that has no mirth.

"Cold," she says, looking down at her fingertips, which are frosted blue. "We always knew that." A bitterness steals into her tone. "Cold and dark."

"Nah," Jack says, leaning his head back against the bars. "Freedom."

She looks startled. "What?"

"Cold was the price of your freedom. Remember?"

Elsa laughs; the sound grates over decaying vocal cords. "How could I forget?"

Jack nods, pretending he's not looking at her, but he is. "You did everything to be free, didn't you?"

"And it never worked," she says. "I'm alone again, Jack."

-o-

At the end of the dream, when his magic comes back even though it shouldn't, he stops questioning it, and the dream stops ending. Instead, he builds up sculptures against the bars of the cage, Elsa's hands on his, the two of them carving art out of cold air. Corkscrew icicles spiral out of the low ceiling; sparkling cascades of snowflakes chime and sing on a nonexistent breeze. He pretends that the belief of a dead girl can give him back the magic that he gave up to kill her. He pretends her laughter is real, not a mockery written into his head by Pitch's Nightmares. Sometimes Anna is there, too, and in the cramped space, where there is hardly room for Jack alone to turn around, the three of them build snowmen and snowwomen and snow-dogs and -cats and anything they can think of.

Elsa, her finger-bones showing through the pale flesh of her outstretched hand, weaves Olaf out of the air. He leaps forward with glee, shouting his greetings. Anna grabs his tiny stick arms and dances a circle with him.

"Anna said you killed him," Jack says to Elsa, watching the awkward but enthusiastic waltz around their tiny confines.

"As much as you can kill a snowman, I suppose."

"Why though?"

Elsa stretches out her fingers and dissolves Olaf back to his glittering components. "I created life," she says. "I took it away." She looks at Jack, and her smile is so wide it splits her skin. "So I could be alone again, Jack."

-o-

"Ah. Ow. What happened?"

Jack has stopped answering this question. He doesn't like this part.

"Did Pitch stab me?"

Silently, he urges her to get on with it, to get to the good part. The fun part.

"He wouldn't have done that," Elsa whispers, tear tracks burning down her cheeks. "He _loves_ me."

Nausea rises in Jack's throat and he bangs his fist against the bars. "_No_," he says. "No way."

Elsa glares at him through her tears. "Pitch always let me be free." She presses her hands over the hole where her heart should be and looks pleadingly at Jack.

"This is the worst nightmare ever," he moans, banging his head against his knees. "Wake up, wake up, wake up."

"Will he come back?" Elsa implores. "I don't want to be alone again, Jack."

-o-

And sometimes they aren't his dreams.

He stands on the edges of them and they're memories—Elsa's, or Pitch's, things Jack shouldn't know. Doesn't want to see. Elsa isn't dead, or rotting, but it's almost worse. Once he crouches in the web of her black chandelier and he can almost _feel_ how much she hates him:

"Where is he where is he where is he?" She mutters it like a chant, over and over, punctuated by sounds of smoldering anger. "Ugh! Where _is_ he?"

She paces circles around the snowflake in the floor, frosted cape slithering across the ice like dead leaves. Deep below the surface of the floor, incarnadine veins lace the ice, pulsing as if they run with blood. The center of the snowflake is still marred by a blot of sickly rust-color and the smudgy trail of footprints leading away from it. It reminds her constantly of Jack. Of how, months ago, he lay here bleeding beneath the ruins of her chandelier.

If only it had killed him.

Her fist clenches; the black crystals hanging from her twisted bracelets clink and chime; serrated snowflakes erupt from between her fingers. She wishes she could remove the stains, but the castle has glazed over them in her absence. Blood runs deep in the architecture of her palace now.

"Where is he!"

"Elsa. Hush now."

Elsa flings a bolt of ice toward Pitch without even looking. He folds into the shadows beneath him and rises up on the other side of the room; the bolt shatters against an archway.

"Don't condescend me," Elsa snaps. Pitch rolls his eyes.

"You are letting an _inconsequential factor _turn you into a—" Pitch gestures sharply, trying to find the word. "A state of _complete_ disarray. He's Jack Frost!" He throws his hands into the air. "He's practically invisible! Well—" Pitch smiles, folding his hands behind his back again and sauntering toward the balcony. "By now I expect he _is_ invisible. Poor Jack. How that must _burn_."

"Burning's not on my agenda." Elsa stands beside him on the balcony, which hangs out over the abyss. Its railing is an elaborate scrollwork of wrought-iron and black glass, and it reaches into the darkness as if intending to stretch all the way across the void.

She curls her fingers into fists at her sides, and rime loops up her arms like gloves. "Where did he go? I felt him in the storm. Was it too much for him?"

Pitch leans his elbows on the balcony railing, rolling his eyes again. "He came here to die. What does it matter where he succeeds?"

"It matters!" She slams her hand into the railing and it splinters. Pitch loses his balance and nearly topples forward before he catches himself. "It matters because I want to look him in the eye and _cut his throat_."

A dagger of ice glitters out of nowhere and into her hand. Pitch chuckles, resting against an unbroken expanse of railing and spreading his hands wide.

"Elsa," he says, "tell me. Are you happy?"

"Happy?" She turns her face to his. "I'm Queen. And _everyone_ is afraid of me."

Pitch tilts his head back, smiling, as if this is music to his ears. "And this is what you wanted, is it not? What—" He falls backward into the gloom over the balcony's edge and reappears in Elsa's shadow. "—_we_ wanted."

"Yes."

"And you are here only because of Jack Frost! You should be _thanking_ him. I know I am!" Pitch throws out his hands again. "Why, it would have been so much more difficult to coax you from your castle if he had not compounded your fear"—he reaches out to run one pallid finger down the side of her face—"with your _hate_." His hands fold behind his back again, and he retreats a step in order to bow to her. "Undoubtedly, we should be greeting him with milk and cookies. Perhaps it would make him feel more at home. Why are you still so angry with him?"

Elsa pivots away again, stepping forward to stand in the gap in the balcony rail, teetering on the edge of the void. "Because it hurts," she says quietly, furiously, something black glittering behind her eyes where no one can see it. "Because it still hurts."

("Jack? Ow. What happened? Thank you. _Thank you_. It still hurts. It hurts being alone again.")

-o-

"Some people are worth melting for," pipes up the snowman with a skull for a head.

"Shut up, Olaf," says Jack, glaring determinedly past him into the darkness.

"You're just not one of them," says Olaf, while a raven-shaped Fearling pecks at his nose. "I guess that's why you're alone again, Jack."

-o-

"_SHUT UP!" _Jack roars at the darkness, but there isn't anyone to hear.

-o-

"Going to while away your life in dreams, Jack?"

He sits with his arm around her; they're playing tic-tac-toe in loopy frost patterns on the cage floor. She's snowflakes, he's x's made of pale twisting thorns.

"I don't exactly have anything _else_ to do down here."

She pauses before adding her snowflake to the tic-tac-toe grid. Pinching two fingers together, she raises them into the air, trailing a ribbon of sand that trickles down into pale gold-dust. "Leave," she suggests.

Jack shrugs, drawing frost flowers onto the ceiling above them. "Can't," he says. "I don't have any powers."

Pieces of Elsa begin flaking away, but this time, she just looks frustrated beneath the decay. Jack smiles wryly at her. "This might suck, but at least it's not boring," he says. He laces his fingers with hers, and the feel of skin peeling off the bones makes him want to throw up everything he hasn't eaten in—oh, it must be centuries now. The bile nearly chokes him, but he doesn't let go.

"At least I'm not alone again."

-o-

For a while, Jack dreams of drowning.

He dreams of the utter shock of hitting the icy water, a paralytic to his entire system. He can't move, he's trapped beneath the surface, he's trapped and he just wants to _move_—and then there was the thrashing, the way the water frothed around him, the searing in his chest, the panic, the choking. He didn't think he remembered this is in such great detail, but wherever it is buried in the snowbanks of his mind, the Nightmares have dredged it up to torment him. Fear clutches at the edges of his vision, blurring it towards a starry black; he beats himself against the solid wall of cold, the ice-water cage.

And then the calm slips over him. It is, perhaps, even more terrifying than the thrashing panic, because he doesn't want to move. He doesn't need to move. He need only let the water take him until the moon raises him up.

In the dream, the moon doesn't raise him up.

In the dream, he sinks lower and lower, clothes billowing out around him, kelp tangling in his silver hair, eyes wide open to watch the empty night close in above. He can't remember what it's like to be anything but still, a statue sinking to the bottom of the sea, a trickle of gold sand floating

When Jack chokes himself awake, Anna is sitting up next to him, looking groggy. "Jack? Ah. Ow. What happened?"

Jack can't answer, because his lungs are full of seawater and he doesn't even have the air to breathe.

-o-

Elsa leans over to kiss him where he sprawls on the cold floor of the cage. He imagines they are in a vast field, with nothing but glittering hills of virgin snow for miles and miles, and the wind whispers its blessing over them both.

-o-

Or he stands invisible on an expanse of mountain plain, and the Nightmare army arrayed before him has nothing on the nightmares parading through his head. They are barely visible against the lightless sky, but by the glow of their eyes, he can see their king and queen. Elsa sits atop a Nightmare that is more blue than black, its tainted snowflake-skin shifting like a gentle snowfall. She is draped in shades of violet and black, with a silver halo of her hair and her hems; snowflakes dance behind her in a perpetual wind, like a snow-globe that never runs out of flitter. Pitch is seated beside her on midnight made manifest in equine form, nothing visible but the pallid blot of his face against the mountain sky.

Jack tucks his hands into his pocket, rubbing his fingers on the gritty remnants of Sandy's long-ago gift and stares grimly at the Queen of the Cold and Dark with her King of Nightmares. Elsa looks out to where he stands, as if she can see him—although he isn't there, not if this is her memory or Pitch's; Jack is as invisible as if he doesn't exist (_alone again, Jack_). In his nightmare, she meets his eyes, and from the back of her steed she leans over and kisses the Nightmare King.

Jack gags. "Ow. What happened?" asks a voice beside him. He turns to see Elsa, smiling wryly, hands clasped in front of her, her cheekbones visible through the curling skin of her face.

"He's so _old_," says Jack, sounding nauseated. Elsa arcs an eyebrow.

"Three hundred," she says, pointing at Jack, "and some."

"Yeah, but he's about a _thousand_."

Elsa pauses, then smiles. "Older than that," she says.

"That's revolting," says Jack. Elsa raises one hand into the air, skin sloughing off and falling as snow. He looks away, but she grabs his wrist with her other skeletal hand.

"Look," she says, as the army of Nightmares kicks into a gallop, bearing down on the two of them. A flurry of frost spirals in her palm down into a trickle of sand. "This is a true dream. Stop them."

"What?" says Jack, flinging out his hand to gesture at the stampede of bad dreams and blackness. "Stop _that_? It already happened. And I don't have any powers."

"Stop them," she says, spinning sand into the air like stars, "or you'll always be alone again, Jack."


	29. Stuttering Through the Dark

A/N: We're at more chapters than reviews again. :p Have I lost your attention? Haven't heard from anybody in a while! Well, there are only three chapters left after this, so we only have three more days together! I hope someone's enjoyed the ride. :D

29 (Stuttering Through the Dark)

Jack wakes up again with Anna's hand on his shoulder this time, as if he has missed the start of the nightmare. She's shaking him; his head flops from side to side a few times before he jerks back to awareness.

"Ow. What happened?" he asks, and frowns.

"That Pitch freak stabbed me." Anna bends her elbow up behind her, poking gingerly at the hole in her back, and winces. Disgusted, Jack pulls his hood up and sticks his hands in his pocket. "Still haven't figured out what happened to you though. I couldn't wake you. I tried everything! Not that there's much to try here. It's not like I have a bucket of cold water or anything."

Jack rubs at the grains of sand in his pocket and says slowly, "You're off-script."

"I'm… wait, what?"

He shrugs, catching the stray sand under his fingernails, and then leaps to his feet. "It was a hint!" he says loudly.

"Um… nope, still in the 'wait, what?' line," says Anna.

Jack practically turns his hoodie pocket inside out, trying to dig the remainders of Sandy's gift out of his seams. A few golden grains drop into his palm, dull and almost invisible in the grey light. But then, Jack knows all about being invisible.

He closes his fist over the remnants of the Dreamsand and starts to pace. One of his feet goes out from under him and he stumbles. Momentarily bewildered, he drops his gaze to see what threw his balance off.

Frost flowers, vines of glacier-blue, branching thorns and root systems, spiral out from the place where he was sitting. They tangle together in frantic whorls, as if he had been hemorrhaging ice in his sleep.

Jack sighs and flips his hand through his hair. "How can I have my powers back?" he says dully, dutifully. "That doesn't make any sense." Might as well end another one. Maybe he'll get Elsa again on the next round, and the three of them can build a snowman, and he can forget that he's not supposed to be grateful for the nightmares.

"I dunno," says Anna, examining the frost patterns closely. "You were doing that in your sleep. Pretty weird, huh. Were you dreaming?"

Jack stares at her.

"You… believe in me?" he says tentatively. She scrunches up her face.

"I can see you, does that count? I guess that must count. I know you're real. If you're not real I'm kind of not sure what happened to Arendelle. Since it's your fault and all."

Hesitantly, Jack reaches out to touch her. He isn't even sure why. She looks at him askance and waves her hand in front of his face.

"Hellooo? Jack? You're acting a lit-tle weird."

Jack remembers the Dreamsand fragments in his hand. There are hardly any left—not enough to last. But maybe enough to show him the difference between the nightmares and reality. He rubs them into his eyes, wincing.

Anna makes a face. She doesn't disappear. She doesn't start to rot.

"Are you… real?" Jack asks.

"Um. Yeeeeees?"

"But you're dead," he says.

"Well that's not very nice!"

Jack puts his head in his hands. His eyes burn with sand in the corners, blinding him to the nightmares. What he can see is real or memory. _This is a true dream_. _Stop them_.

Jack drops his hands and laughs. It feels like waking up. "You're real," he tells Anna.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I already said that."

"You're real and I could _kiss_ you!" He laughs again, dragging his hand along the bars of the cage and leaving glittering trails behind. Anna makes another face.

"I think you'd better save that for Elsa."

Jack stops, smile faltering. The Dreamsand seizes on the memory, and it swims before his eyes, one more dream in a string of them: _Elsa leans over to kiss him where he sprawls on the cold floor of the cage. _It hits him like a blow from his own staff that he doesn't have the memory of a single real kiss. Only dreams and regrets.

"Maybe true love's kiss'll wake her up," he mutters.

"Well duh, isn't that what you came all this way for?"

_I came all this way, didn't I?_

Jack shakes his head, then realizes she might take it for a negative and says, "Yeah. But we gotta take out Pitch, first."

Anna reaches out one arm and rattles pointlessly at the bars of the cage. "Still stuck, Jack."

Jack grins at her, the sparkle in his eyes definitely not grateful tears, because all his desperate regret has been moping enough without crying, too. But Anna's _here_, this time, not just another corpse on the nightmare assembly line. She's here, and she believes, and he has magic again, at least a little.

"Thanks, Sandy," Jack whispers, to the little Star Captain who used to send dreams to makes wishes come true. Even if there are no stars in here, there is a dusting of sand, and Jack wonders if the Sandman knew, when he gave Jack that little pouch of Dreamsand. If he knew it would let him reach in through the blackout zone and send Jack the dream he needed while he was drowning in nightmares.

"My name's _Anna_, remember? Wow. No way are we going to be able to beat Pitch." Cringing, she starts tearing strips off the hem of her dress, awkwardly tying them around herself. "I'm practically an invalid here, and you're obviously a crazy person now. Those cage bars are looking pret-ty sturdy."

Jack steps forward and helps Anna arrange the makeshift bandages. The motion throbs with painful familiarity, faint frost shimmering over the fabric, and for a minute he's sure she's going to rot away from him again.

She doesn't, though, and his lips turn up, and he hugs her. He can't help it. He needs the reminder that they're both real.

"Are you kidding?" he says, skipping over to the cage door, twirling his finger in the air, drawing corkscrews of frost. "I've got Princess Anna of Arendelle, who isn't afraid of the King of Nightmares." He presses his hand against the lock; pale thorns leap out across the metal, creeping inside, forming the teeth of a jagged key. The lock clicks and he shoves the door open with both hands.

"And you've got Jack Frost," he says, and grins. "Who rules the winter again." He turns to Anna and holds out a hand.

"Yep, we're pretty much set," Anna says, curtsying awkwardly and flouncing forward to accept it. "Definitely not going to die."

"That's the spirit," says Jack, and reminds the wind who he is as they leap into the open air.

-o-

They plummet ten feet from their prison before Jack manages to catch them on a sluggish breeze. Anna screams. Jack rolls his eyes and pulls them upward, but it's a long way from the center of the earth to the peak of the North Mountain. They stutter higher, staying close to the wall so Jack can cling to the chasm's uneven surfaces, breathing heavily, searching the darkness above them for some hint of the sky.

"Believe _harder_," he gasps to Anna, who's pressed against the dark stone as if trying to merge with it.

"You're not exactly inspiring confidence here! Ow." She grits her teeth, and her grip on the black outcropping slackens. "I'm pretty sure I just started bleeding again. Aaaaand yep that was blood. That's definitely blood trickling down my back."

Jack swings down toward her, one hand clutching a narrow ledge. Anna is trying to pretend it's not really bothering her, but the set of her teeth and the tears at the corners of her eyes tells him that she's barely holding on through the pain. He hesitates, then brushes his fingers across the night-edged wound and its frayed, grimy bandages. A tiny knot of frost blossoms over the jagged hole; the spreading stain of black blood congeals and freezes. Anna gasps and shivers, and then her brow furrows in determination.

"Thanks," she says, nodding and holding out a hand to him, nearly slipping off the side of the cliff. "Can we get out of here now?"

Jack drops from the wall and scoops her up, arm around her shoulders. She makes a distressed sound and thumps her fist against his chest, knocking the wind out of him. But he doesn't let go, just launches them upward again, Anna protesting, "Hey! Not cool, Jack! I can fly by myself! Well. I mean I can't. But I definitely don't need your help. Except I kind of—but seriously—!"

"Shut up," he says, head tilted back, and he wonders if it's unfair that he's imagining his arms around Elsa instead.

-o-

"Look! That's the sky! Probably. I mean it actually looks the same as all this goopy black fog and the stars are all still gone so it might not be but I'm _pretty sure that's the sky_."

"Yeah, Anna, that's the sky," Jack says through gritted teeth. He feels like he has gravel in his eyes and mud for bones, but the abyss opens up above them and he can taste the fresh mountain air again. The flavor of winter and the savor of snow urge him higher out of the dark.

They wobble; Anna shrieks, although their flight path has never been steady, and he would expect she's gotten used to this by now. Perhaps the touch of melodrama is just her way of keeping him awake. Or maybe it's just Anna. Jack's hand shoots out, dropping Anna's legs; she throws her arms around his neck, nearly choking him, and he lets go of her entirely to clamp his fingers on the rough brink of the chasm. Anna makes a lot of alarmed noises, but she doesn't kick or thrash, and Jack appreciates this immensely.

"Climb up," he grates.

"Wait, _what?_"

"Look, I'm not—" _strong enough_. He stops; he doesn't want to say it. He has to believe, too, or else it's just Anna, and she's not enough to defeat Pitch Black, no matter how fearless she is. "I can't pull us both up right now, so you're gonna have to go first."

She grumbles and kicks out her feet to brace herself against the wall, still attached to Jack's neck, then stretches out one mittened hand to grasp a jag in the side of the cliff. Jack drops one hand off the edge to catch her as she lets go of him entirely—both of them nearly plunge back into the nightmarish fugue of Pitch's lair—and then she shimmies up over the stone lip, muttering encouragements to herself the whole while. Jack hangs there for a moment, breathing a sigh of relief, then hauls himself up after her.

The two of them lay face-up in the snow, spread-eagled, taking in the sky. It isn't much, but it's wide, and Jack breathes it in, letting it wash away the claustrophobia of vaulted ruins and tiny prisons. Beside him, Anna gets bored of lying still and makes a half-hearted snow angel without changing position. Jack chuckles and follows suit, only when he flips to his feet—Anna clambers up, trampling her angel's dress—his snow seraph has a full set of feathery wings and a trailing skirt longer than he is tall.

"Show-off," Anna says. Jack bows.

"Okay, so how do we find—hey." Anna has turned around, and her eyes widen, and she stares at the crumbling ruin of her sister's palace. There isn't much left—just a dripping foundation and black rubble, and something dark hunched in the center.

"What—what happened?" Anna is too stunned to move for a moment, and then she rounds on Jack. "Jack Frost, you better tell me this—this _instant_—what happened or I'll—I'll—I'm gonna—ooooh, I'm _gonna—_"

"Let me know when you've come up with a good enough threat," Jack says, wishing he had his staff so he could prop it on his shoulder.

"There _isn't_ a good enough threat," she concludes, folding her arms and lifting her nose. "But whatever I do, it's gonna _hurt_."

Jack smiles wearily. "It already does," he says, and gestures toward the wreckage. "Elsa—"

Before he can finish, the hunched black shape in the castle ruin unfolds itself and stands up.


	30. Even the Snow

30 (Even the Snow)

Pitch Black looks the same as he always does, but he has Jack's staff. It's grown taller with shadow, it's painted black with the night; its crook bares obsidian icicle-teeth, monstrous jaws ready to bite the hand that always held it. Jack's fingers flex with sudden dread; one hand lifts, almost unconsciously, in longing. He forces it back down, turning his head to the side, face set in a furious grimace, fists clenched at his sides.

"Jack _Frost_?" Pitch's voice slithers through the shadows on the snow, and he rises up before Jack and Anna, dragging a train of dusk and Nightmares. "Jack Frost," he says again, ponderously, towering over the two of them. "And Princess Anna. Weren't you… dead?"

Anna puts on her most imperious impression. "I certainly was not."

"How inconvenient." Pitch notices Jack's eyes, trained on his staff, and smiles. He gives the staff a twirl, its spectral length wavering as it spins. "How do you like it, Jack? I think it _suits_ me."

Jack makes a grab for it, but Pitch glides backwards, then dissolves into his own shadow, reappearing in the rubble, standing over a fallen ice sculpture. "Jack, I really just don't know how to get rid of you. Is there anything I haven't tried?"

Jack realizes, suddenly, that Pitch sounds… tired. He sounds like Jack when Jack's trying to pretend nonchalance and barely holding himself up; his words are just as smooth and cruel as always, but there's something forced about them.

Pitch turns away, still talking, his voice echoing across the field of debris and broken snow. "You don't die. You don't sit quietly in your cage." He twists his head, and all Jack can see are burning eyes in a face as wan as disease. "You don't just _fade away_."

"That all sounds so boring," Jack says casually, tucking his hands in his pockets. Pitch lifts a hand to run it across the fraying face of the nearest Nightmare. Jack saunters closer, Anna adopting a similar pose of forced insouciance and strolling along beside him. Jack smiles a little without looking at her.

"Your _predictability_ is boring," says Pitch, narrowing his eyes. "Why don't you go bug someone else for a while?"

"No one else is as fun to annoy as you, Pitch. Congratulations. You should get an award for that." Jack hops up onto a boulder that seems to have cracked out of the mountainside. A long snowy track is gouged out of the ivory field behind it. From here he can see the extent of the castle's remains: a star-shaped sprawled of impure ice, with narrow paths of running water cutting intricate mazes into the snow.

Behind him, Anna begins attempting to climb the boulder, with little success and a lot of exertive noises. Nonchalantly, Jack scuffs his foot in the snow, kicking a dusting of white over her hair. Her sounds of effort turn into cries of outrage.

But he doesn't want her up here. He doesn't want her to see.

He doesn't want her to find Elsa's body half-buried in wreckage, bruised and bloody and broken.

Pitch points his purloined staff across the ruin, moving sideways so the writhing hem of his robe curls up to hide Elsa, who it seems he has been digging free of the castle remains. Jack keeps staring at the space where she was. The image of her battered face haunts the backs of his eyelids when he blinks, so he doesn't blink. He tries to conjure up her glittering smile again, even the shape of her when she was evil, but all he can see is a crushed mockery of a queen, a trampled relic in the ruins of her own freedom. It is like seeing Emma old all over again—except this is not a nightmare; the Dreamsand still itching in his eyes tells him that he is seeing the truth.

Jack chokes, and he can't say anything. He's lost the thread of the conversation entirely. If Pitch's talking, Jack doesn't notice.

He jumps, and though his flight is sloppy, he lands beside the Nightmare King and his flanking equine guard. Anna hollers across the snow. Pitch whirls, coiling murk reaching out for the winter spirit. Jack steps past him, hands in his pocket, defenseless, and stands over Elsa.

He breathes for just a moment—it is all he has—and then he says, so quietly that even the snow cannot hear him, "I just wanted to help you."

_I'm happy, Jack. Isn't that what you wanted for me? _

Pitch's hand snaps out and Jack pirouettes away, out of reach. He grabs hold of his staff with both hands; Pitch yanks back, and Jack uses the momentum to swing himself around, twisting sideways, soaring up—and landing on the Nightmare's back. Pitch hisses his exasperation while the Nightmare prances in agitation.

"What do I have to _do_, Jack Frost? Must I set you on fire?"

"That'd probably work," says Jack thoughtfully, tangling his fingers in the Nightmare's anfractuous mane. "Too bad you didn't think of it sooner."

And then he draws a string of snowflakes out of the sinuous shadows in his hands. It writhes and fights, and loops around to make itself into a rein that glows a sickly blue, casting stark shadows across Jack's face. He jerks on the snowflake-chain and the Nightmare leaps away, tossing his head and flinging stray splinters of ice into the air.

Pitch's eyes widen, then narrow in fury, and he draws himself up on a pedestal of night. Jack laughs and leans forward to touch his hand to the Nightmare's shoulder. It nearly bucks him off, but frost flowers awaken beneath the decaying surface of its shade-black skin, pulsing and spiraling across its flanks. In three hundred years, Jack never learned how to ride a horse; he just hangs on, cracking up, as the Nightmare cavorts and canters across the sky.

Below them, he sees Anna running toward the castle ruin; his laughter freezes, his eyes go wide, and he points the snow-made Nightmare downward. It is more shadow than snow, and it doesn't want to obey him, but he commands the winter again—or at least, he's on speaking terms with winter again—and he forces it on. Jack Frost and the Nightmare surge forward, but Pitch draws up a mantle of midnight that snakes and convolutes and blocks their descent.

"Jack Frost!" he hears Anna yell behind the fuliginous veil. "_Where is my sister?" _

"She'll know soon enough," says Pitch with a small smile. Jack focuses on him, yanking the Nightmare back. It rears, then turns a tight circle in the air. Jack's eyes never leave Pitch's.

"Why are you still talking, Pitch?" he says, lips turning up in a bitter expression that only distantly resembles a smile. He can see the threadbare patches in the Nightmare King's fluttering cloak; glimpses of Anna and the ruins start to show through. "She's not scared of you. Heck—" He gestures at his own Nightmare steed, which takes the opportunity to try to buck him off. "I've got one of your Nightmares. _I'm_ not scared of you."

Pitch's eyes narrow to smoldering slits. "Let's see if we can fix that," he says, and snaps the fingers of one greying hand.

The rest of his Nightmare armies emerge from the moonless night around them. Their eyes fill the sky with searing stars—and though they are all made of Elsa's snow, snow which crumbles away and leaves them looking like stygian skeletons and rotting spiders, Jack knows he's in trouble. He only has Anna's belief to fuel his magic; he can barely control the one Nightmare he rides, let alone the armies at Pitch's hand.

Pitch's face curls into an expression of triumph, but before he can direct his legions to attack, Jack yells, "You can time-travel, Pitch! Why don't you just bring her back?"

Shock holds Pitch frozen for half a second, until spears of shadow scream out of his dusky mantle. Jack and the Nightmare dive to the side; one of the spears clips the Nightmare's side, tearing a great chunk out of its frosted flank and sending rider and mount spinning toward the ground. A battalion of Nightmares rises up to meet them in their descent; Jack flings out a hand, blasting ice across their muzzles, but they merely shake their heads and surge forward again. Jack braces himself, wrapping his arms around his Nightmare's neck and squeezing his eyes shut—he does not believe, after all, that Pitch and his armies cannot consume a spirit of winter, for though he can't die he can be devoured, corrupted—but he will never let himself stand in Elsa's place.

The falling Nightmare stops as if it has run into a glass window, and Jack cracks his nose on its crest. Gingerly, he slits one eye, to find Pitch in front of him, sitting sideways on another Nightmare, his palm pressed against Jack's Nightmare's forehead.

"When she died," says Pitch, his lips curled in a snarl, "you lost _everything_. I made you powerless." He curls his hand where it lies, digging into the bridge of the Nightmare's nose and ripping out a chunk of tainted snow. The Nightmare begins to dissolve beneath Jack.

"Rest assured, Jack Frost," says Pitch, flinging the handful of dry snow away from them. "I _will_ have her back." He smiles mirthlessly, sliding off the Nightmare onto a cloud of murk that congeals to catch him. He plants the staff he stole from Jack in the cloud and twirls around it, mockery in every line of his face.

"But how could I give up the utter _delight_ of throwing the invisible boy into his dear friend's grave?" He claps his hands together, leaning back against the inked-over staff. "Oh, and let's not forget the _hours_ of nightmares I got to devise. Did you _know _you cry out in your sleep, _Jack? _It's…" He bares his teeth as Jack realizes there is little but the barest bones of a Nightmare holding in the air, and looks around frantically for something to jump to. "…_delicious_."

"Gross," says Jack, and drops off his dispersed steed. He hits another Nightmare feet-first and staggers backwards, grabbing its tail as he topples off. Pale blue runs up the strands and Jack hauls himself back up to crouch on the new Nightmare. "You've _got_ to get out more."

Pitch gestures, and the Nightmare crowd around Jack Frost turns as one, rotting fangs exposed, a hungry fire in their aurous eyes. "Uh oh," says Jack, dropping into a seat and kicking his Nightmare upward—but its compatriots are already tearing at its flanks, devouring lumps of snowy flesh as Jack scrambles to avoid their teeth. He can hear Anna shouting beneath them; Pitch throws a casual glance back over his shoulder, and the barricade of night falls, leaving the mountain scenery visible below.

"Feeling powerless yet, Jack? She's found the sister you let die. I doubt that belief will last very much longer." Pitch raises his eyebrows mournfully. "Then you'll be all thawed out once again. I may yet have the chance to set you on fire."

"Should be fun," says Jack grimly, standing up and hopping to another Nightmare. He propels himself off its head, leaping to the next, as if they are stepping stones in a sea of shade.

"How delightful that you agree," says Pitch, twirling his stolen staff over his head, gathering a maelstrom of dusk around him. "But I won't lie. I _most_ look forward to seeing your face when a child runs straight. Through. You." He punctuates each word with a shaft of shadow spiking out of his storm as he advances on Jack. "Maybe then you will see _my_ side of things."

Jack grins, flipping to another Nightmare, who snaps at him as he dashes to the next. "But if I remember right," he says, "you're having a little trouble finding any kids to watch."

That's when the children come surging over the hill.


	31. No Reason but the Cold

A/N: This is the penultimate chapter! Tomorrow is the last day! Time to start wrapping things up. This is undoubtedly the most self-indulgent thing I have ever written, full of melodramatic angst, pointlessly detailed descriptions of clothing, constant reminders that snow is a) cold and b) white, and my propensity for eccentric word choice (raise your hand if you knew what caliginous meant before I used it in this fic. …now raise your hand if you still don't know what caliginous means). I used NaNoWriMo as an excuse to ignore plot and characterization and occasionally canon. xD NOT TO MENTION HORRIBLE TYPOS

So I just want to take a moment to thank everyone who's read this far, especially those who have reviewed (or who will come to review after I post this). I ALSO definitely need to thank anyone who listened to me rave about Jelsa for the past month and a half, PARTICULARLY Claam (who puts up with it almost every day xD) but also especially: my roommate (also subjected to it on a nearly daily basis), the Exquisite (none of whom will probably ever see this, but who read so many excerpts it was ridiculous), Jessica (uh, who is awesome, hello!), Stacia (who is the reason this fic exists), all the random passersby who were subjected to me: cross-eyed, one eye twitching, grabbing onto their arms yelling, '_I'm writing a Jelsa fic for NaNoWrimo'… _and, uh, everyone who's read to this point. Because you have all just been subjected to my month-long raving about Jelsa. Congratulations. Enjoy the last two chapters. I love you all. :p

31 (No Reason but the Cold)

The power shoots through Jack with such force that he misses his next step and plummets past the snapping sea of Nightmares. It doesn't matter, though, because he stretches out his hands and frost corkscrews out of his palms in wild white tangles. It swathes the decaying Nightmares, binding their wounds and turning them to shades of cerulean and mist. One frosted head snakes out, snagging Jack's hood; his descent stops abruptly, and the Nightmare tosses him onto its back, where snow swirls into a bridle in his hands.

Jack stares at them in awe for a moment, and then laughs.

A frantic look crosses Pitch's face, and he sweeps the shadow staff around, hurling his shade-storm toward Jack and the small brigade of reformed Nightmares that surround him like an honor guard. The still-shadowed Nightmares turn on their icebound brethren, cracking their frost armor and starting a skirmish that sends Jack and his steed charging downward to avoid.

Below the battle, the children are emerging from behind rocky outcroppings and snowdrifts as if out of nowhere. Each one rides a tiny reindeer; each one bears a grin of absolute delight; and each one is pointing straight at Jack Frost.

Above them, on the curve of the North Mountain, Kristoff and Sven are murky silhouettes surveying their handiwork.

"This is _ridiculous!" _Jack shouts to the sky, laughing as he yanks his Nightmare around and flings his arms wide at Pitch and his army. Alice blue flashes glint among the host, Jack's frostbound Nightmares flitting through the legions of rotting shadow. Pitch himself descends on his cloud of dusk, stolen staff stretching into a toothed scythe, free hand cupping a knot of dancing black darts. They bullet toward Jack, who blocks them with a sheer pane of ice, then stands up on the back of his Nightmare. He bends his knees, spreads his feet, and the Nightmare takes off, heading straight for Pitch.

"I am the king of an _eternal night!_" Pitch shouts, sweeping his staff across the frosted Nightmare's trajectory. The Nightmare ducks its head—Jack jumps straight up—the scythe blade arcs between the two and Jack lands on the Nightmare's withers once again. "You can't simply _laugh_ me out of town!"

"Done it before," Jack yells, forming a facsimile of his staff out of solid ice that shines as if it is filled with moonlight. "And I'll do it again!" He launches himself off the Nightmare; Pitch's bladed staff flails with panic in his direction; Jack flips around the slice of stolen night, icicle staff swung back over his head. It slams down with enough force to crack bone; Pitch only barely manages to pull threads of shadow across himself in time to entangle the ice.

Jack loops over his head, kicking toward Pitch's back; a fist of shade knocks him sideways, and he tumbles through the air, seeing stars. Down on the mountainside, he can see Sven galloping down the slope, once again bringing Kristoff and Anna together. The children are gathering like a miniature army; Jack grins, reverses to stop his fall, and forms a refulgent snowball out of the air.

It hurtles downward, and before long, the mountainside is thick with flying snowballs and the shrieking laughter of children, clambering through the ice-melt runnels and liberated boulders. Pitch recoils at the sights and sounds, but his brow furrows into fuming determination; he draws back an arrow of the night, aiming straight for Jack, who's still turned away.

The Nightmares surge forward with the arrow's release, the whole of the midnight armies lunging to consume Jack Frost in the throes of his restoration. At the last second, he pivots in midair, slashing his arms across his body—and the rivers of ice-melt rise into the sky, a tsunami of liquid diamond ascending to meet the Nightmares led by Pitch Black's arrow. The water crashes through them, freezing solid at the touch of shadow; the entirety of the soaring river ices over, crushing Nightmares into powder and glittering fragments of dark. Pitch spins, horror taking over his expression; when he swivels back around, the scythe comes with him, stretching out raking black teeth, seeking Jack's defiant form where he stands on a patch of cold sky and laughs.

"None of _them_ are afraid of you, either, Pitch!" he hollers, stuttering through his mirth. "Look at all those kids! Not one screaming in fear! And _all of them _believe in _me!"_

He twirls his staff of ice until the crook is aimed straight for Pitch, and he blasts a forking tangle of white lightning straight through the shadow scythe and into the space where Pitch's heart used to be. Pitch falls; Jack swoops higher, flipping himself up to stand on the peak of the frozen river, arms spread wide to the sky. He's never had such power as this—the sort of power he can only dream of, unless he has a little bit of Sandy's help to make his dream come true.

Jack jumps forward and skates down the glazed heights of the ice-melt tower, careening across its grooved surface, rushing wind dragging wild tears from his eyes. And if he's finally crying, it's not for any reason but the cold.

He skids to a stop in the snow, dizzy and laughing, and executes an eloquent bow to the children. They've all frozen in the midst of their snowball fight, mouths hung wide to gape. Jack grins as widely as he can as the world reels around him. He plants his staff in the snow and leans against it, and it's the only reason he doesn't fall down.

A rustling in the snow pulls him around; Pitch is there, without Nightmares, without shadow—nothing but a face filled with resentment and snow on his robes. He drags himself to his feet and scowls at Jack, standing defiant, propping himself up on Jack's staff, which has returned to its normal size.

"The queen is dead," says the Nightmare King. "Long live the king."

Jack shakes his head. "Dawn's already on its way," he says. "You should probably go." Pitch opens his mouth, and Jack rolls his eyes. "And you don't have to tell me I can't get rid of you. I've heard this all before. But, Pitch," he adds, as Pitch turns to walk away, "you can't get rid of me, either. As long as you're the monster from under the bed, I'll be the one who kicks you back underneath it."

Pitch scowls over his shoulder and limps away, using Jack's staff as a cane. Jack frowns at it, then scoops up a snowball that's more ice than snow. He takes careful aim and throws; it knocks the staff out from under Pitch, who nearly topples over.

"And while we're at it, leave the snow-globe!"

Pitch hisses as he draws himself up, turning around one more time. He draws the clockwork snow-globe out of his robes, clenching it in one fist as he shoves it out toward Jack.

"Here," he says, snarling. "For all the good it'll do you. Decide, then, Jack. Our Snow Queen, or all that you have saved here." He gestures at the giggling array of children, at Kristoff and Anna kissing behind the dubious privacy of Sven's bulk, at the luminescence of dawn casting its creeping aurora over the mountainside.

"She isn't _ours_," Jack snaps, but Pitch is already gone, disappearing behind a snow-capped outcropping and slinking into the shadows like a passing dream.

-o-

Jack drops to his knees and finds himself mobbed with children. He grins as brightly as he can at each of them. A little brunette approaches him tentatively, holding out his staff; he looks in her eyes and thinks of Emma as he takes it, ruffling her hair in thanks. A blond boy so tiny he looks like he shouldn't be walking yet trots his equally tiny reindeer up to Jack and offers the snow-globe, looking hopeful. Jack ruffles his hair, too, then flicks snow into his face; the boy shrieks with mock horror and gallops his diminutive steed away, caught in gales of laughter. Jack smiles weary and turns back to the ruin.

Anna and Kristoff are walking slowly toward him, Sven in their wake. Jack goes to meet them with a horde of children on his tail. He slams his ice staff and his old wooden staff together as he walks; with a flare of bright light, they merge, a pale blue glaze spiraling across the wood's grooved surface. Tiny icicles hang from the crook, and the end narrows into a translucent point. Satisfied, he slings it over one shoulder and looks at Kristoff.

"Thought you didn't believe in me," he says, coming to a stop. Kristoff puts his arm around Anna.

"I don't," he says. "You let my wife die."

"Uh, hello, _fiancée_," Anna says. "_And_ not dead. That one was just all kinds of wrong."

Kristoff smiles down at her, and the love Jack can see there nearly sends him reeling backwards. Sven shoves his head between the two of them; Kristoff pats it and returns his gaze to Jack. "But that didn't mean the kids shouldn't."

"You sound so… stoic. Are you sure you're still Kristoff under all that reindeer?" Jack exhales heavily. "Thanks," he says. "I owe you o—everything."

"Nope. You owe them." Kristoff gestures to the children; Jack turns his head back, and smiles, and then sets his gaze forward.

Kristoff notices and draws Anna past Jack; together, they shoo the children back, while Jack forces his steps up into the ruin, over the cracked stone foundations of the ice palace—the only thing that remains of Elsa's masterpiece. She lies on bare blasted rock, pale as bone and broken.

Jack crouches down beside her, and ice curls out of his footprints, weaving frost back into the scintillating gown she wore on the day she found freedom. Then he lifts her, tucking his staff under one arm, and tries not to choke as he carries her back to her sister.

Anna runs forward, leaving Kristoff to keep the children corralled, and pulls Elsa out of Jack's arms. She stumbles back, nearly dropping Elsa; Jack catches them both, drawing his fingers through Elsa's loose hair as he retreats. "Can I—" he starts, but Anna shakes her head through furious tears. She bows her head over her awkward, frozen bundle; tears drop onto Elsa's cheeks and freeze there like diamonds. The rising sun gilds them both, and Kristoff's antler crown as he steps forward to help his betrothed hold her older sister's body.

"I don't want you at the funeral, Jack Frost," says Anna, her voice muffled. "It's your fault she's dead. Go home."

Jack grimaces, but he doesn't protest. Kristoff doesn't defend him either, and Jack knows there's no reason he should. But Jack can't imagine going home without goodbyes.

He pulls the snow-globe out of his pocket and looks down at it. Rosy sunlight catches on the glass, making the interior invisible. Jack shields his eyes against the sun and looks up; Kristoff and Anna are walking away, supporting Elsa together. Sven comes forward and they drape her over his back. Anna holds her hand while Kristoff chivvies the children back onto their reindeer to lead them down to Arendelle's resurrecting folds.

For a long, paralytic moment, Jack almost turns the clockwork backwards. _Our Snow Queen, or all that you have saved here. _Then he hears an echoing laugh, feels the sun warming the back of his neck, and sets the snow-globe forward to what used to be home.


	32. How to Survive the Winter

A/N: And here we are. The end of the line. This story was supposed to be 25,000 words—for a little perspective, that would've ended it about chapter 11. Then it was supposed to end after chapter 24. Now, _76,000 words later_, it finishes. What a month. xD It's been great. I love everyone who is reading this right now. I hope you'll let me know how you feel now that it's over.

Fanfiction and I grew apart many years ago, and this has been a wonderful one-month stand but I've come to realize that we're just not meant to be together. *tragic swoon* I'm sure I'll never really let go, though, and I'll probably cheat on original fiction again in the future—I still have so many FF ideas. :p In the meantime, back to the real world of revision and (hopefully) publication!

Love and hearts,

Kit

32 (How to Survive the Winter)

The Guardians are waiting for him.

He falls free in North's workshop, which glitters as it always has. A yeti leaps forward and wrestles the snow-globe away from him, presenting it to North with a bow. Jack rolls his eyes as he climbs to his feet, dusting himself off.

"As if I wouldn't give it back," he says, leaning back against a workshop table. "Look at how much trouble it's caused me."

"But you fixed it?" North says sternly.

"I fixed it," Jack confirms, then pauses. "Shouldn't you guys not remember it, if I fixed it?"

"Oh, I kept the old memories safe," says Toothiana, fluttering nervously back and forth. "I knew they would change, see, so I just… I just took a few teeth!" She casts an anxious glance at the other Guardians, but none of them look upset. "We all agreed it was more important to remember what could have happened."

"Ah," says Jack, and looks down, scuffing his foot on the floor. No frost spirals outward. Alarmed, he straightens upright, spinning around; he sweeps toys off the table with his staff, to the distressed howls of the yeti who took the snow-globe, and plants his palm on the wooden surface. "No, no no no—"

Nothing happens; no lacelike patterns paint the table, no blocks of ice encase the fallen toys. "No no no no no no!" He pivots, feeling the warm water running across the newly-glazed surface of his staff. It drips from the icicle embellishments, splashing onto his knuckles like tears. "Why is it gone again?" he asks. The others just stare at him. "_Why is it gone again?"_

A blur of images flits above Sandy's head, frustrating both of them because nobody understands. It flickers through another series of vague shapes, then ends with a fluttering gold butterfly that falls out of the air. Jack narrows his eyes at it.

"It was only temporary?"

Sandy nods. He holds up one hand, and the tiniest trickle of sand falls—not more than a few golden grains. "There wasn't enough," Jack whispers. He sinks to the ground, letting his staff clatter beside him, holding his head in his hands. "It was only a dream."

A shadow falls over him and he flinches, certain for a moment that it's Pitch, somehow—but it's only North, kneeling beside him to put one enormous consoling hand on his shoulder. "Man in Moon says—" he starts, and Jack jumps to his feet, shoving North's hand away.

"I don't care!" he shouts. "Forget the Man in the Moon! I'm sick of the silent treatment! If he ever—if he just—if he wants to say something to me, he can say it in person!"

"Well, alright then," says a voice behind him, "if you insist."

Jack whirls around to see a short, round man with a bald head and one tuft of hair like a question mark standing on the table that's been cleared of toys. He holds a staff not unlike Jacks, but more intricate, the crook at the top a crescent moon; Jack looks down at his own staff and kicks it away from him. He turns away in disgust.

"You've done good work, Jack."

Jack makes a scathing noise, but doesn't look back. "I don't have anything to say to you."

"I find that hard to believe," says the Man in the Moon—who is not, at present, in the moon. "Considering how much you usually have to say to me."

Jack pivots, ready to yell for the Man in the Moon to _shut up_—but he finds he cannot bring himself to, not after three centuries of begging for him to speak. Instead, he just glares, fists shoved sullenly into his pocket.

"Once you called me friend."

"It was an accident," says Jack grumpily. A hundred thousand questions are bubbling up inside him, and the loudest is _why_—why everything, why bring him back, why ignore him for three hundred agonizing years, and why show up now to break the silence.

Tsar Lunar XII sits down on the table, swinging his feet over the edge. "You've sacrificed everything," he says. "Twice now. Some might call that excessive."

"Thanks for reminding me," Jack snaps, narrowing his eyes at his feet.

"Once for ice powers," continues Tsar Lunar ponderously, "and once to lose them. Twice for love, though," he adds.

"I don't need a recap!" Jack yells, turning away to stalk off. The other Guardians line up behind him in an impenetrable wall. Bunny eyes him as if daring him to fight.

"I can give them back," says Tsar Lunar. Jack goes still.

"You've earned them. You certainly deserve them."

"Elsa's dead," says Jack flatly. "I don't deserve anything." With one foot he flicks his staff, plain wet wood once again, up into his hand. Then he turns, runs, and vaults over the railing before anyone can stop him.

He drops to the next level, grabbing the rail as he plummets past and swinging himself over. The clockwork snow-globe is back in his hands, stolen from North's long coat as he leaned consolingly over Jack—but this time Jack doesn't need to travel through time.

He shakes the snow-globe and throws it on the ground with more force than necessary. Then, with elves jangling the alarm behind him, he jumps through to Burgess.

-o-

School's just letting out when Jack steps out into the streets draped with autumn. He kicks through dry rustling leaves and leans against the schoolyard fence, fingers laced through the chain-link diamonds, forehead pressed to the metal as he searches for Jamie or any of his other friends. Jamie spots him first—Jamie always spots him first—and comes running, calling over his shoulder to Pippa and Cupcake and all the rest. Jack climbs over the fence and crouches on top, the metal biting into his bare feet.

"That was _so boring_, hey, are we gonna have another snow day tomorrow, Jack? What do you think?"

Jack looks down at him, smiling humorlessly, and shakes his head. "Nah," he says, resting his staff across his knees. "You gotta learn something sometime, don't you?"

"You can teach us plenty! You've seen a lot, haven't you?"

"Sure," says Jack. "But teaching sounds just as bad as _learning_." He grins half-heartedly and hops down to stand in front of the kids, cocking his staff up to his shoulder.

"We can have some fun _now_, though, can't we, Jack?"

Jack hesitates; his grip on his staff tightens until his knuckles turn white. "I've got a question for you guys."

"Do we have to raise our hands if we know the answer?"

"No." Jack crouches down so that he's eye-level with Jamie. "If I didn't have powers, would you still believe in me?"

Jamie grins. "You don't stop believing in winter just 'cause it's summer, do you?" he says.

Jack smiles and rubs his fingers together. A single snowflake revolves in the air above his hand, jagged and flowered, then drifts slowly to the ground.

-o-

First, he went to her funeral. Of course he went to her funeral.

He soared over the emerald expanses of spring in Arendelle, tossing pale pink flowers on a chill breeze, making sure to avoid the path that Kristoff, Anna, and the children were taking back to the castle. He hid in the rafters and the unused rooms for three days while they prepared the kingdom for mourning and bustled through the dilapidated spaces, trying to restore some semblance of order. Jack laughed to himself to have to secret himself into the chapel, reflecting on how he'd been invisible days before, and now he had to work to not be seen. He tried not to leave icy tracks on the windows or floor, but he thought Anna and Kristoff noticed.

If they did, they didn't say anything.

Elsa's funeral procession was white. It was as if, just for a few hours, the kingdom were blanketed in snow once again: alabaster banners draped the walls of the city; colorless flowers were strewn through the streets. The mourners trailed behind her like a great river of snow. Her dress was embroidered in iridescent strands of pearls and lace—not a fragment of real ice to be found among them, but decorated so skillfully as to look like the whole thing was frosted. Jack recognized the spiraling blossoms as his own, cradling her personal, jagged snowflake across the flare of her bodice.

He wanted to land and walk beside her, to touch her face and feel her frozen skin, but instead he soared overhead, supported by the wind, straining his eyes for every detail. Anna and Kristoff flanked her bier; Sven pulled it through the streets, his antlers hung with fluttering strips of white ribbon. The children ran behind, holding snowflake-shaped pinwheels high in the air—as if they knew.

Jack indulged them, and a gentle breeze sent them all to spinning.

They took her across the fjord, through the town and up onto the hill, where the grass rustled in the spring wind and a grave already waited between the old king's and queen's memorial stones. They lowered Elsa's body into it—and then Anna and Kristoff, Queen and King of Arendelle, turned and ushered the rest of the kingdom back down to the city where, no doubt, the mourning would go on.

They left the grave open and Elsa exposed to the bright spring sky.

When he was sure the last of them were gone, Jack dropped out of the air, alighting beside the gaping wound in the earth. He sat down on the edge of it, then dropped to cram himself into the grave beside the former queen. One hand reached out to touch her cheek; frost spiraled across her skin, painting stars and thorns beneath her eyes. Her dress whispered in the breeze; threads of her cornsilk hair frayed out of her tightly-woven funereal braid, dusting across her forehead. Her hands were crossed over her chest, clasping flowers hand-carved from ice and already melting in the vernal air. They stained the patch above her heart into a dark blot that spread down the silver threads like veins.

Jack brushed his hand over the flowers, freezing them into intricate whorls of petals and pearls. _Maybe true love's kiss will wake her up_, he remembered, and smiled bitterly.

He leaned over, pressing his mouth to hers. White frosted her lips where they touch, feathering the cracks like sugar. She wasn't any colder than she ever was, but she was so—

Very—

Still.

Jack launched himself out of the grave, and it iced over behind him as he threw himself into the wind.


End file.
